all that lived among them, while in the snowy light reflected from outside the mahogany furniture also gleamed with its own life or cast back things of long ago, past sufferings of small people and past sentiments. The silent moods of old and lonely people seemed to rise up from the old, solemn furniture, which smiled good-humouredly because so much new life had come into the midst of it from the outside: the chair-springs moaned, the cupboard-doors creaked, the looking-glasses grew dull and bright in turns, the china became chipped, the silver became scratched, full of the serviceable humility of those very old, wearing things of daily life, which had long been used and were dying off slowly, while all around and about them blossomed the new movement of the new life from without. And yet, despite that new movement and that new life, a soul of the past seemed to hover through the long passages, up the brown stairs, to skim along the dark doors, even though these, when opened, gave admission to the rooms of the new life. Even in the rooms themselves, something still hovered of that soul of the past; and the furniture reflected that soul, as though it were vaguely clinging to material things, a soul catching at earthly things when itself had not yet died out entirely. . . .
In among these reflections of the soul-things of the past there lingered a remnant of biblical piety, because of the titles of certain books in the bookcases, because of certain old-fashioned engravings in the dark rooms; and at certain hours of silent twilight there passed through the house a sort of hover of prayer, which Constance sometimes felt so intently that, on Sunday mornings, she always insisted that the girls at least should go to church, as though they were almost bound to do so out of reverence for the old people who used to live and
