I have spoken strongly; it was hardly possible but that on such a matter I should feel strongly.

But don't go away misunderstanding me--don't imagine for one instant that there is anything in the world that really matters to me in comparison with your happiness and your future!" The venerable old man wrung the hand he held, walked quickly to the door, and shut it behind him.
* * * * * An hour later, Aldous was writing in his own sitting-room, a room on the first floor, at the western corner of the house, and commanding by daylight the falling slopes of wood below the Court, and all the wide expanses of the plain.

To-night, too, the blinds were up, and the great view drawn in black and pearl, streaked with white mists in the ground hollows and overarched by a wide sky holding a haloed moon, lay spread before the windows.

On a clear night Aldous felt himself stifled by blinds and curtains, and would often sit late, reading and writing, with a lamp so screened that it threw light upon his book or paper, while not interfering with the full range of his eye over the night-world without.
He secretly believed that human beings see far too little of the night, and so lose a host of august or beautiful impressions, which might be honestly theirs if they pleased, without borrowing or stealing from anybody, poet or painter.
The room was lined with books, partly temporary visitors from the great library downstairs, partly his old college books and prizes, and partly representing small collections for special studies.

Here were a large number of volumes, blue books, and pamphlets, bearing on the condition of agriculture and the rural poor in England and abroad; there were some shelves devoted to general economics, and on a little table by the fire lay the recent numbers of various economic journals, English and foreign.