make her encounter sterile.” She seems to have feelings for both Hugo Montmorency and Gerald Lesworth. But later in the novel, she stops her affectionate feelings towards Hugo and cannot determine what she should feel about Gerald. Marda Norton remembers a story that causes her to "go dry inside to think of it now.” This human sterility extends to or emerges from the place itself i.e. Ireland: "Talking of being virginal, do you ever notice this country? Doesn’t sex seem irrelevant?” Sir Richard knows that his plantation is almost crushed and he does not want any further damage to happen to it by bringing the soldiers to look if there are buried guns in his plantation: “And why would we want to know? You’ll have the place full of soldiers, trampling the young trees. There’s been enough damage in the plantation with the people coming to sightsee…" The big house Danielstown is a very spacious place where most of the incidents in the novel take place. It seems to have unique characteristics and a haunting effect on its inhabitants and visitors. In Elizabeth Bowen: The Shadow Across the Page, Maud Ellmann suggests that architecture in Bowen's writings is inseparable from characters: "In her writing, architecture takes the place of psychology: character is shaped by rooms and corridors, doors and windows, arches and columns, rather than by individual experience." Lois approaches the house from a distance in the end of the first section of the novel ruminating over the scenery and she feels that the house is interacting with her: To the south, below them, the demesne trees of Danielstown made a dark formal square like a rug on the green country. In their heart like a dropped pin the grey glazed roof reflecting the sky lightly glinted. Looking down, it seemed to Lois they lived in the forest; space of lawns blotted out in the pressure and dusk of tree. She wondered still more that they were not afraid. Far from here too, their isolation became apparent. The house seemed to be pressing down low in apprehension, hiding its face, as though it had her vision of where it was. It seemed to huddle its trees close in fright and amazement at the wide light lovely unloving country, the unwilling bosom whereon it was set. Laurence calls it "a dreadful house." The looking-glasses of the house make Gerald sleepy. Marda