“I’ve tried to plan you a house here with some self-respect of its own. If you don’t like it, you’d better say so. It’s certainly the last thing to be considered⁠—who wants self-respect in a house, when you can squeeze in an extra lavatory?” He put his finger suddenly down on the left division of the centre oblong: “You can swing a cat here. This is for your pictures, divided from this court by curtains; draw them back and you’ll have a space of fifty-one by twenty-three six. This double-faced stove in the centre, here, looks one way towards the court, one way towards the picture room; this end wall is all window; you’ve a southeast light from that, a north light from the court. The rest of your pictures you can hang round the gallery upstairs, or in the other rooms. In architecture,” he went on⁠—and though looking at Soames he did not seem to see him, which gave Soames an unpleasant feeling⁠—“as in life, you’ll get no self-respect without regularity. Fellows tell you that’s old fashioned. It appears to be peculiar anyway; it never occurs to us to embody the main principle of life in our buildings; we load our houses with decoration, gimcracks, corners, anything to distract the eye. On the contrary the eye should rest; get your effects with a few strong lines. The whole thing is regularity⁠—there’s no self-respect without it.”