He had visited an elderly relation in a city in which people lived in such small spaces that they kept what was theirs to themselves.  He had not been asked in by the old man.  He had been kept waiting in the corridor outside to look in through an open front door on what was clearly a home stuffed into a room.  He couldn’t hold the look.  He found himself looking away, to the only window at the far end of the corridor, to the many doors along the way to it that sheltered off rooms most likely like the one he felt now too timid to look into.  It felt to him to be too much, too indecent, to be allowed to take in the life of a man of substantive years all in one glance.