his chair and to wait for a minute or two in order to become
aware of such a change in the auditory scale as comes upon a man who,
conceiving the midsummer woods to be motionless and still, all at once
finds his ear sharpened to the crepitation of a myriad insects.

And he smiled to think of man's arbitrary distinction between that which
has life and that which has not. Here, quite apart from such recognisable
sounds as the scampering of mice, the falling of plaster behind his
panelling, and the popping of purses or coffins from his fire, was a
whole house talking to him had he but known its language. Beams settled
with a tired sigh into their old mortices; creatures ticked in the walls;
joints cracked, boards complained; with no palpable stirring of the air
window-sashes changed their positions with a soft knock in their frames.
And whether the place had life in this sense or not, it had at all events
a winsome personality. It needed but an hour of musing for Oleron to
conceive the idea that, as his own body stood in friendly relation to his
soul, so, by an extension and an attenuation, his habitation might
fantastically be supposed to stand in some relation to himself. He even
amused himself with the far-fetched fancy that he might so identify
himself with the place that some future tenant, taking possession, might
regard it as in a sense haunted. It would be rather a joke if he, a
perfectly harmless author, with nothing on his mind worse than a novel he
had discovered he must begin again, should turn out to be laying the
foundation of a future ghost!...

In proportion, however, as he felt this growing attachment to the fabric
of his abode, Elsie Bengough, from being merely unattracted, began to
show a dislike of the place that was more and more marked. And she did
not scruple to speak of her aversion.

"It doesn't belong to to-day at all, and for you especially it's bad,"
she said with decision. "You're only too ready to let go your hold on
actual things and to slip into apathy; _you_ ought to be in a place
with concrete floors and a patent gas-meter and a tradesmen's lift. And
it would do you all the good in the world if you had a job that made you
scramble and rub elbows with your fellow-men. Now, if I could get you a
job, for, say, two or three days a week, one that would allow you heaps
of time for your proper work--would you take it?"

Somehow, Oleron resented a little being diagnosed like this. He thanked
Mi