On an Empty House
his youth he had so taken for granted her perfections and her companionship, that these had, as it were, made his world for him; he had judged the world by that standard. Now that he knew the world, he used that standard no more. It would not be just to say that at her early marriage he had felt any pain save a necessary loss of some companionship. He had never had a sister; he continued to receive her advice and to enter her house as a relative, for though he was not a relative, the very children would have been startled had they ever chosen to remember that he was not one, and his Christian name came as commonly upon their lips, upon hers, and upon her husband's as any name under their own roof. He would not, of course, finally take this house until she had seen it.
He was waiting, therefore, in the hall one morning of that winter a little impatiently to show her his choice, and to take her verdict upon certain details of it before he should write the last letter which should bind him to the place. He heard a motor-car come up, looked out and saw that it was hers, and met her upon the steps and led her in. She also was pleased with everything she saw, and her pleasure suddenly put light into the house, so that if you had seen her there, moving and speaking and laughing, you would have had an illusion that the sun had come shining in all the windows; a true physical illusion. You would have remembered the place as sunlit. She noted the panelling, she
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