Explore "The Way Home" by Henry Handel Richardson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
For the first time in his life Mahony found himself in possession of all the books he wanted: rare books hard to get; expensive books he had till now never felt justified in buying. And Mary, his social conscience, being absent, he fell into depths of abstraction from which there was nothing to rouse him.
His two old arch-enemies time and money--or rather the lack of them-- had definitely ceased to plague him. His leisure was unbounded, the morrow well provided for, and the material comfort of his present surroundings such as he had hitherto known only in dreams. No domestic sounds rasped his ear, scattered his attention; his spacious study, book-lined from ceiling to floor, stood apart from the rest of the house, and was solidly built. Was cool and airy, too; even in the heat of midday he caught a whiff of the sea. The garden with its shrubberies and lawns of buffalo-grass, its spreading figtrees and dark firs, rested and refreshed the eye. His meals appeared on the table as by clockwork, served as he liked them, cooked to a turn. And so greatly did the hermit's life he now led jump with his mood, that invitations to social functions grew fly-spotted on the chimney-shelf, or were swept up by the housemaid from the floor.