Mr Morgan, Mr Torrance, and in later years myself, he admitted to the Study. Acquaintances he received with his wife in their clean and expensive drawing-room. Husband and wife were in harmony when entertaining a few of those whom Mrs Stodham called their friends. On these rare occasions the defensive combination of her slightly defiant pride and his kindly resignation was a model of unconscious tact. If there was a man--which seldom came about--Mr Stodham would ask him into the Study. The gas was slowly lighted, the gas-stove more slowly or not at all. The intruder would remark what a lot of books there were, and how he never had any time for reading. There was only one chair, and he was compelled to sit in it and to light a cigarette. Mr Stodham himself was loth to smoke there in profane company, but dallied with an unaccustomed cigarette, or, if he took a pipe, soon rapped out on the stove with it some variation upon the theme of discontent. In either case his gentle but disturbed presence hung oppressively on the visitor, who very soon took the hint from that helpless but determined face, to propose a return to the drawing-room. There Mrs Stodham frequently made the remark: “What a lot of books John has,” nodding complacently and with the implication partly that she despised them, partly that she saw their worth as a family distinction. At the end of such an evening or after any unpleasantness Mr Stodham would go into the Study, stick an unlit pipe between his teeth, open a book and read very slowly, stretching his legs out, for five minutes, then sigh, stand up and look along the rows of books without seeing them, and go up to bed before he had defined his dissatisfaction.