The hall was a long shadow beyond the glow of them standing. He was quiet waiting, not sheer against her: his shaggy coat poured the street’s coldness. She was a dim thing about eyes.
“I’m so glad it’s you, Mr. Samson.”
She walked noiseless through shadow, she took no space from it, she was infinitesimal within a mood. He followed.
“I was taking it right easy ... reading.”
In the gaslight she turned and fronted him. She took his coat. He was a fair boy, gentle, somewhat plump. He sat down, she stood.
—I have been in this room before, I have seen this woman before. It is not the sort of room, she is not the sort of woman I want to see for I am here for neither.... Why strangely now this sense of her reality upon me?
It was her room, there they were after all, the woman in her room touching upon him.—Let me see in this silence the woman in her room.
Her quiet words did not obtrude upon a silence whose margin he caught as it waved. He saw her a battered creature. He saw her absurdity of painted cheeks, two imitation flowers stuck in the ruts of a road. He sat in a room whose dinginess enarmed him. He sat in the misery of this woman. He sat deep.
“Still so cold out?” Over her head a chandelier ... brass gas, hideous brutal under the flecked ceiling. His feet glowed with renewing warmth. In his eye beneath his shoes a carpet of acid green.
—We sit.... She sits in a cloud of dinginess. Sharp spirit veiled in a cloudy flesh. Now: centers of glow, thrown from the woman, solid like her spirit. He was aware of loveliness.