Wary

I love this description of being in an unfamiliar house from Elizabeth Bowen's The House in Paris: It is a wary business, walking about a strange house you know you are to know well. Only cats and dogs with their more expressive bodies enact the tension we share with them at such times. The you inside you gathers up defensively; something is stealing upon you every moment; you will never be quite the same again. These new unsmiling lights, reflections and objects are to become your memories, riveted to you closer than friends or lovers, going with you, even, into the grave: worse they may become dear and fasten  like so many leeches on your heart. By having come, you already begin to store up the pains of going away...