He looked out of the window with a miserable expression.

The beautiful front yard, with its box-bordered flower-beds, did not cheer him with the sense of possession.

He heard a bird singing with a flutelike note; he heard bees humming over the flowers, and he longed to hear, instead, the buzz and whir of machines which had become the accompaniment of his song of life.

A terrible isolation and homesickness came over him.

He thought of the humble little house in which he and Sylvia had lived so many years, and a sort of passion of longing for it seized him.