Your eye, first of all, would glide over the grey fitted carpet in the
narrow, long and high-ceilinged corridor. Its walls would be cupboards,
in light-coloured wood, with fittings of gleaming brass. Three prints,
depicting, respectively, the Derby winner Thunderbird, a paddle-steamer
named Ville-de-Motitereau, and a Stephenson locomotive, would lead to a
leather curtain hanging on thick, black, grainy wooden rings which would
slide back at the merest touch.
The first door would open onto a bedroom,its floor covered with a
light-coloured fitted carpet. An English double bed would fill the whole
rear part of it. On the right, to both sides of the window, there would
be tall and narrow sets of shelves holding a few books, to be read and
read again, photograph albums, packs of cards, pots, necklaces, paste
jewellery. To the left, an old oak wardrobe and two clothes horses of
wood and brass would stand opposite a small wing-chair upholstered in
thin-striped grey silk and a dressing table.
