Between the windows stood a small philosophical bookcase, the volumes of it full of small reference slips, and marked from end to end; and on the other side of the room was a revolving book-table crowded with miscellaneous volumes of poets, critics, and novelists--mainly, however, with the first two.

Aldous Raeburn read few novels, and those with a certain impatience.

His mind was mostly engaged in a slow wrestle with difficult and unmanageable fact; and for that transformation and illumination of fact in which the man of idealist temper must sometimes take refuge and comfort, he went easily and eagerly to the poets and to natural beauty.

Hardly any novel writing, or reading, seemed to him worth while.

A man, he thought, might be much better employed than in doing either.
Above the mantelpiece was his mother's picture--the picture of a young woman in a low dress and muslin scarf, trivial and empty in point of art, yet linked in Aldous's mind with a hundred touching recollections, buried all of them in the silence of an unbroken reserve.