So with the house empty and the doors locked and the mattresses rolledround, those stray airs, advance guards of great armies, blustered in,brushed bare boards, nibbled and fanned, met nothing in bedroom ordrawing-room that wholly resisted them but only hangings that flapped,wood that creaked, the bare legs of tables, saucepans and china alreadyfurred, tarnished, cracked. What people had shed and left—a pair ofshoes, a shooting cap, some faded skirts and coats in wardrobes—thosealone kept the human shape and in the emptiness indicated how oncethey were filled and animated; how once hands were busy with hooksand buttons; how once the looking-glass had held a face; had held aworld hollowed out in which a figure turned, a hand flashed, the dooropened, in came children rushing and tumbling; and went out again.

　　Now, day after day, light turned, like a flower reflected in water, itssharp image on the wall opposite. Only the shadows of the trees, flourishingin the wind, made obeisance on the wall, and for a momentdarkened the pool in which light reflected itself; or birds, flying, made asoft spot flutter slowly across the bedroom floor.

　　So loveliness reigned and stillness, and together made the shape ofloveliness itself, a form from which life had parted; solitary like a pool atevening, far distant, seen from a train window, vanishing so quickly thatthe pool, pale ............