A desk teetered with old letters, tracts, magazines, open books, the disarray of a full but scattered interior life. There were two easy chairs flanking a wood heater. A cell really, the home of the kind of soul who had made a certain truce with the demands of the flesh. Clothes, food, objects were only tools—functional, uninspired, necessary, and good. She suspected that somehow they were important to him only as the vehicles of his search.
