Sylvia and Hermann certainly did all that could be done for her; in other words, they invariably saw that her water was hot, and her stock of novels replenished.  But when that was accomplished, there really appeared to be little more that could be done for her.  Her presence in a room counted for about as much as a rather powerful shadow on the wall, unexplained by any solid object which could have made it appear there.  But most of the day she spent in her own room, which was furnished exactly in accordance with her twilight existence.  There was a writing-table there, which she never used, several low arm-chairs (one of which she was always using), by each of which was a small table, on to which she could put the book that she was at the moment engaged on.  Lace hangings, of the sort that prevent anybody either seeing in or out, obscured the windows; and for decoration there were china figures on the chimney-piece, plush-rimmed plates on the walls, and a couple of easels, draped with chiffon, on which stood enlarged photographs of her husband and her children.

There was, it may be added, nothing in the least pathetic about her, for, as far as could be ascertained, she had everything she wanted.  In fact, from the standpoint of commonsense, hers was the most successful existence; for, knowing what she liked, she passed her entire life in its accomplishment.  The only thing that caused her emotion was the energy and vitality of her two children, and even then that emotion was but a mild surprise when she recollected how tremendous a worker and boisterous a gourmand of life was her late husband, on the anniversary of whose death she always sat all day without reading any novels at all, but devoted what was left of her mind to the contemplation of nothing at all.  She had married him because, for some inscrutable reason, he insisted on it; and she had been resigned to his death, as to everything else that had ever happened to her.

All her life, in fact, she had been of that unchangeable, drab quality in emotional affairs which is characteristic of advanced middle-age, when there are no great joys or sorrows to look back on, and no expectation for the future.  She had always had something of the indestructible quality of frail things like thistledown or cottonwool; violence and explosion that would blow strong and distinct organisms to atoms only puffed her a yard or two away where she alighted again without shock, instead of injuring or annihilating her. . . .  Yet, in the inexplicable ways of love, Sylvia and her brother not only did what could be done for her, but regarded her with the tenderest affection.  What that love lived on, what was its daily food would be hard to guess, were it not that love lives on itself.

The rest of the house, apart from the vacuum of Mrs. Falbe’s rooms, conducted itself, so it seemed to Michael, at the highest possible pressure.  Sylvia and her brother were both far too busy to be restless, and if, on the one hand, Mrs. Falbe’s remote, impenetrable life was inexplicable, not less inexplicable was the rage for living that possessed the other two.  From morning till night, and on Sundays from night till morning, life proceeded at top speed.