Perch of the Devil by Gertrude Atherton — Read

Ora looked round the large living-room of her bungalow with a deep sense of content. The walls were covered with a material coarse in weave and of a red warm but not too bright. The colour was repeated in the divan and chairs, melting softly into browns that harmonised with the heavy beams of the ceiling. A few Navajo rugs covered the floor. Above the divan of many cushions was a bookshelf crowded with the new fiction of two continents. Several shelves, built like a bookcase, occupied a corner and were furnished more ponderously. In the middle of the room a large table was half covered with the best periodicals of the day, although there was room for a large lamp with a red shade and a vase filled with wild flowers. Down at the far end of the room, which was about thirty feet long, and opposite the kitchen, were the dining-table and a small sideboard. The main door opened upon a verandah, and one beside the fireplace into a narrow hall, giving privacy to the bedrooms.

Ora had no atavistic yearnings for the life of the pioneer; she might feel as much at home in a bungalow as in a palace, but elementals, save when pictorially valuable, like overhead beams, were rigidly excluded.