It
tired him a little to dress in the evening; often he longed to stay
relaxed, pondering, until Rudolph called him to dinner. But every day
something automatic, tyrannical, dragged him up to his room, encased him
in rigid linen, formal black. Mariana, against the fireplace, ate
listlessly; and, later, he beat her with shameful ease at sniff.
"You can't do that," he pointed out with asperity, when she
thoughtlessly joined unequal numbers. "Why not?" she asked. She must be
addled. "It's against the rule." Mariana said, "I'm tired of rules."
She always had put away the dominoes, but to-night she ignored them, and
he returned the pieces to their morocco case. She relapsed into silence
and a chair; and he sat with gaze fixed on the hickory in the fireplace,
burning to impalpable, white ash.
What a procession of logs had been there reduced to dust, warming
generations of men now cold. The thought of all those lapsed winters and
lives soothed him; the clamour of living seemed to retreat, to leave him
in a grey tranquillity. His head sank forward, and his narrow, dark
hands rested in absolute immobility on the arms of his chair. He roused
suddenly to discover that Mariana had gone up, and that there were only
some fitful, rosy embers of fire left.
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