to the garden. In the spaces between them, and in the two spaces
between the end windows and the end walls, he placed his bookshelves, a
set of shelves in each space.

Mabel displayed no interest in the move nor made any reference to it at
teatime. In the evening, hearing her pass the door on her way to dress
for dinner, he called her in.

He was in his shirt sleeves, arranging the books. "There you are! Not
bad?"

She regarded them and the room. "They look all right. All the same, I
must say it seems rather funny using your bedroom for your things when
you've got a room downstairs."

"Oh, well, I never liked that room, you know. I hardly ever go into it."

"I know you don't."

And she went off.

III

But the significance of the removal rested not in the definite
relinquishment of the den, but in her words "using your bedroom": the
definite recognition of separate rooms.

And neither commented upon it.

After all, landmarks, in the course of a journey, are more frequently
observed and noted as landmarks, when looking back along the journey,
than when actually passing them. They belong generically to the past
tense; one rarely says, "This is a landmark"; usually "That was a
landmark."

IV

The bookcases were of Sabre's own design. He was extraordinarily fond of
his books and he had ideas about their arrangement. The lowest shelf was
in each case three feet from the ground; he hated books being "down
where you can't see them." Also the cases were open, without glass
doors; he hated "having to fiddle to get out a book." He liked them to
be just at the right height and straight to his hand. In a way he could
not quite describe (he was a bad talker, framing his ideas with
difficulty) he was attached to his books, not only for what was in them,
but as entities. He had written once in a manuscript book in which he
sometimes wrote things, "I like the feel of them and I know the feel of
them in the same way as one likes and knows the feel of a friend's hand.
And I can look at them and read them without opening them in the same
way as, without his speaking, one looks at and can enjoy the face of a
friend. I feel towards them when I look at them in the shelves,--well,
as if they were feeling towards me just as I am feeling towards them."
And he had added this touch, which is perhaps more illuminating. "The
other day some one had had out one of my books and returned it upside
down. I swear it was as grotesque a