Rose, whose own literary tastes inclined towards the society papers, varied by an occasional French novel, had said of her with some truth, that the drier a book was, the better she liked it. Reuben had long ago discovered Judith’s power of following out a train of thought in her clear, careful way, and had taken pleasure in providing her with historical essays and political lives, and even in leading her through the mazes of modern politics. Perhaps he did not realize, what it is always hard for the happy, objective male creature to realize, that if he had happened to be a doctor, Judith might have developed scientific tastes, or if a clergyman, have found nothing so interesting as theological discussion and the history of the Church. Judith stood before her little library in the dark November dawn, with a candle in her hand, scanning the familiar titles with weary eyes. She was so young and strong, that even in her misery she could sleep the greater part of the night; but these last few days she had taken to waking at dawn, to lying for hours wide-eyed in her little white bed, while the slow day grew. But to-day it was intolerable, she could bear it no longer, to lie and let the heavy, inarticulate sorrow prey on her. She would try a book; not a very hopeful remedy in her own opinion, but one which Reuben, Esther, and Leo, who were all troubled by sleeplessness, regarded, she knew, as the best thing under the circumstances. So she scanned the familiar bookshelves, then turned away; there was nothing there to meet her case. She put on her dressing-gown and stole out softly across the passage to Leo’s empty room, where she remembered to have seen some books. Here she set down the candle, and, as she looked round the dim walls, her thoughts went out suddenly to Leo himself, went out to him with a new tenderness, with something that was almost beyond comprehension. She knew, though she did not use the word to herself, that after some blind, groping fashion of his own, Leo was an idealist--poor Leo! There were books on a table near, and she took them up one by one: some volumes of Heine, in prose and verse; the operatic score of _Parsifal_; Donaldson on the _Greek Theatre_; and then two books of poetry, each of which, had she but known it, appealed strongly to two strongly marked phases of Leo’s mood--_Poems and Ballads_, and a worn green copy of the poems of Clough. She turned over the leaves carelessly. Poetry? Yes, she would try a little poetry. She had always enjoyed reading Tennyson and Shakespeare in the schoolroom. So she put the books under her arm, went back to her room, and crept into her little cold bed. She took up the volume of Swinburne and began reading it mechanically by the flickering candlelight.