He put his hand lightly, first on the foot of the banister, then on a curve in it halfway up, again on the sharper curve at the top and last on the knob of his bedroom door.

And it was as though these guiding objects came out to meet him like old friends.
In his bedroom, while he slowly undressed, his glance was caught by the picture upon the wall opposite his bed, a little landscape poster done in restful tones of blue, of two herdsmen and their cattle far up on a mountainside in the hour just before the dawn, tiny clear-cut silhouettes against the awakening eastern sky.

So immense and still, this birth of the day--the picture always gave him the feeling of life everlasting.

Judith his wife had placed it there.
From his bed through the window close beside him he looked up at the cliff-like wall of the new apartment building, with tier upon tier of windows from which murmurous voices dropped out of the dark: now soft, now suddenly angry, loud; now droning, sullen, bitter, hard; now gay with little screams of mirth; now low and amorous, drowsy sounds.

Tier upon tier of modern homes, all overhanging Roger's house as though presently to crush it down.
But Roger was not thinking of that.