mood. Peace and happiness had relaxed every muscle in her face; her
lips were parted very slightly, and her breath came in smooth,
controlled inspirations like those of a child who is surrounding
itself with a building of bricks, and increasing in ecstasy as each
brick is placed in position. So Mrs. Hilbery was raising round her the
skies and trees of the past with every stroke of her pen, and
recalling the voices of the dead. Quiet as the room was, and
undisturbed by the sounds of the present moment, Katharine could fancy
that here was a deep pool of past time, and that she and her mother
were bathed in the light of sixty years ago. What could the present
give, she wondered, to compare with the rich crowd of gifts bestowed
by the past? Here was a Thursday morning in process of manufacture;
each second was minted fresh by the clock upon the mantelpiece. She
strained her ears and could just hear, far off, the hoot of a
motor-car and the rush of wheels coming nearer and dying away again,
and the voices of men crying old iron and vegetables in one of the
poorer streets at the back of the house. Rooms, of course, accumulate
their suggestions, and any room in which one has been used to carry on
any particular occupation gives off memories of moods, of ideas, of
postures that have been seen in it; so that to attempt any different
kind of work there is almost impossible.

Katharine was unconsciously affected, each time she entered her
mother's room, by all these influences, which had had their birth
years ago, when she was a child, and had something sweet and solemn
about them, and connected themselves with early memories of the
cavernous glooms and sonorous echoes of the Abbey where her
grandfather lay buried. All the books and pictures, even the chairs
and tables, had belonged to him, or had reference to him; even the
china dogs on the mantelpiece and the little shepherdesses with their