Happiness! Did not the mere
fact of attaining our desires deprive them of their charm? Life was an
alternating of longing and regret. I pushed paper and pen aside, and began
roaming aimlessly about the house. The large old-fashioned rooms impressed
me as strangely silent and forlorn. I wandered up to the attic which our
father had used as a laboratory, and which had always struck us children
as a mysterious apartment, where he did wonderful things with
strange-shaped instruments and bottles which we were told contained
deadly poison. His apparatus was still ranged on the shelves, thick in
dust, and the air was heavy with the pungent smell of acids. The large
drawing-rooms with their heavy hangings looked shabbier and dingier than
of old; I could not help noticing the neglected look of everything. I had
hardly entered them during the past year, and now I vaguely wondered
whether Caroline on her return would wish to have them renovated. Then I
remembered how I had received there for the first time, some four years
ago, my brother's Socialist friend, and I could not help smiling as I
recollected my excitement on that occasion. I was indeed young in those
days! I picked up a book which was lying on a table thick in dust, and sat
down listlessly in the roomy arm-chair by the fireside, which had been my
father's favourite seat. I began turning the pages of a volume, "The
Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius," and gradually I became absorbed in its
contents.
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