He was waiting, therefore, in the hall one morning of that winter a little impatiently to show her his choice, and to take her verdict upon certain details of it before he should write the last letter which should bind him to the place. He heard a motor-car come up, looked out and saw that it was hers, and met her upon the steps and led her in. She also was pleased with everything she saw, and her pleasure suddenly put light into the house, so that if you had seen her there, moving and speaking and laughing, you would have had an illusion that the sun had come shining in all the windows; a true physical illusion. You would have remembered the place as sunlit. She noted the panelling, she approved of one carved fireplace, she disapproved of another; she said the house was too large for him; she was sure it would suit him. She showed him where his many books would go, and warned him on a hundred little things which he had never guessed at, in the arrangement of a home. She was but half an hour in his company, and still smiling, still full of words, she went away. He was to see her again in a very short time; he was to lunch at their house, and he stood for a moment after the door had shut in the silence of the big place, as though wondering how he should pass his time. The hall in which he lingered was surely very desolate; the bare boards he was sure he would remember, however well they were covered; he never could make those cold walls look warm.... Anyhow, one didn’t live in one’s hall. He just plodded upstairs slowly to what had been the drawing-room of the house, and the big brass curtain rods offended him; the rings were still upon them. He would move them away, but still they offended him. The lines were too regular, and there was too little to appeal to him. He hesitated for a moment as to whether he would go up farther and look again at the upper rooms which they had discussed together, but the great well of the staircase looked emptier than all the rest; the great mournful windows, filled with a grey northern sky, lit it, but gave it no light. And he noticed, as he trod the bare wood of the last flight, how dismally his footsteps echoed. Then he called up the caretaker and gave her the key, surprised her with a considerable fee, and said he would communicate that day with the agents, and left. When he got to lunch at his friends’ house he told them that he would not take the Empty House after all, whereat they all buzzed with excitement, and asked him what he had found at the last moment. And he said, in a silly sort of way, that it was not haunted enough for him. But anyhow he did not take it: he went back to live in his rooms, and he lives there still. The Landfall