No more was said upon the subject, and my father gave me after dinner a little book, called “Daily Light,” which I promised to read every night and morning. He came to the station to see me off, and, as we were far too early, he was obliged to stand for a quarter of an hour at the window of the carriage, while I longed for the train to start, and we both tried hard to find something to say. I was tormented by an uncertainty as to whether he would expect me to kiss him when I said good-bye. At the sound of the guard’s whistle I thrust out my hand. We shook hands; that was all; and, with the train beginning to move out of the station, I sat back in the corner of the empty third-class carriage. I had a sense of leaving everything behind me, as if I had been starting for the world’s end; and, curiously enough, as much as, or more than, by any human face, I was haunted by a vision of the house. I had forsaken it, and I felt its low, faint call coming to me through the rain. I could see the silent, closed rooms upstairs, the long passage with its rows of brown portraits and the tall window at the end, and it was as if a dust were dropping down upon these things, covering them to sleep till I should return. The shadowy ghosts slipped back into their picture-frames; gradually the life died out of their eyes; and a cold, unbroken silence, like the chill of death, closed over all that hidden under-world. Outside the apples had begun to redden on the high brick walls of the fruit-garden, but within the house all was frozen and lifeless. They were my spirits, my ghosts, and could live only while I loved them. I loved them still, but I was too far away, and I might not find them when I came back. The landscape gliding past me showed through a fine, grayish mist. It was cold, and I pulled up the windows, which almost immediately became covered with the same mist that drifted in the air outside. I wondered where Katherine was, and what she was doing. I had not heard from her, though I had written twice. Then I lay back in my uncomfortable corner and tried to think of nothing. CHAPTER XVIII