A soft light snow was falling; and from high up in
the storm, through the silent whirling flakes, he had looked far down upon
lights below, in groups and clusters, dancing lines, between tall phantom
buildings, blurred and ghostly, faint, unreal. From all that bustle and
fever of life there had risen to him barely a sound. And the town had
seemed small and lonely, a little glow in the infinite dark, fulfilling its
allotted place for its moment in eternity. Suddenly from close over his
head like a brazen voice out of the sky, hard and deafening and clear, the
great bell had boomed the hour. Then again had come the silence, and the
cool, soft, whirling snow.
Like a dream it faded all away, and with a curious smile on his face
presently Roger fell asleep.
CHAPTER XXX
And now he felt the approach at last of another season of quiet, one of
those uneventful times which come in family histories. As he washed and
dressed for dinner, one night a little later, he thought with satisfaction,
"How nicely things are smoothing out." His dressing for dinner, as a rule,
consisted in changing his low wing collar and his large round detachable
cuffs; but to-night he changed his cravat as well, from a black to a pearl
gray one. He hoped the whole winter would be pearl gray.
The little storm which Edith had raised over John's presence in the house
had been allayed. Deborah had talked to John, and had moved him with his
belongings to a comfortable sunny room in the small but neat apartment of a
Scotch family nearby.
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