Good evening. Welcome to the Just Sleep podcast. I'm Tasia, your host.

Every week, I will read you an old story to help you relax of the stressful day behind you and drift off to sleep.

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Tonight, I will be continuing the story,

Love, by Elizabeth von Arnim.

So lie down, close your eyes,

and let me read you a story.

The last thing in the world that the young man who just got into the drawing room wanted to do was to go out of it again.

He wanted to stay where he was forever. Wonderful to have this little time

alone with her things before she herself appeared. It was like reading the enchanting

preface to a marvelous book. Next to being with her, this was the happiest of situations.

For these things were as much expressions of herself as the clothes she wore.

They would describe her to him, let him into at least a part and a genuine part of her personality.

And then, at his very first glance round, he felt it was not a room at all, but a man's

room, George's room, George still going on, and going on flagrantly, shamelessly, in his

great oak chairs and tables, and immense oil paintings and busts, marble busts, corpsey white things on black pedestals and corners.

Hardened into oak, gathered up into busts and picture frames, the essence of George

still solidly cohabited with his widow. She had canonized George. And then, as he was looking round, his nose lifted an impatient scorn of

George's post-mortem persistence, and quite prepared to see whiskey and cigars grown dusty on some

...