The study light was still burning at the eleventh hour.
I noticed it on my way from the reading room, that thin line of amber beneath the door that had no business being there at a time when the rest of the household had long since settled into its nighttime quiet. I had been unable to sleep, which was not unusual, and had spent an hour with a book I had not actually read, turning pages with the mechanical regularity of someone performing the activity of reading rather than engaging in it.
I stopped in the corridor and looked at the line of light for a moment.
Then I went to the kitchen.
