changing moods, elate or dark or longing, walls which have echoed
back voices--all these things when left alone seem to be held in
strange arrest, as if by some spell intensifying the effect of
the pause in their existence.

The child Judith felt this deeply throughout the entirety of her
young being.

"How STILL it is," she said to her mother the first time they
went over the place together.

"Well, it seems still up here--and kind of dead," Jane Foster
replied with her habitual sociable half-laugh. "But seems to me
it always feels that way in a house people's left. It's cheerful
enough down in that big basement with all the windows open. We
can sit in that room they've had fixed to play billiards in. We
shan't hurt nothing. We can keep the table and things covered up.
Tell you, Judy, this'll be different from last summer. The Park
ain't but a few steps away an' we can go and sit there too when
we feel like it. Talk about the country--I don't want no more
country than this is. You'll be made over the months we stay
here."

Judith felt as if this must veritably be a truth. The houses on
either side of the street were closed for the summer. Their
occupants had gone to the seaside or the mountains and the
windows and doors were boarded up. The street was a quiet one at
any time, and wore now the aspect of a street in a city of the
dead. The green trees of the Park were to be seen either gently
stirring or motionless in the sun at the side of the avenue