Days had come of endless flaking snow; and the hard frost kept the snow tight-packed in the garden, alongside the house, the silent, massive building whose thick white lines stood out against the low-hanging snow-laden skies: one great greyness from out of which the grey of the snow fell with a sleepy whirl until it was caught in the grip of the frost and turned white, describing the outlines of villa-houses and the branching silhouettes of black and dreary trees with round soft strokes of white. The road in front of the house soon soiled its whiteness with cart-tracks and footprints; and with the snow there fell from the sky, like so much grey wool, the pale melancholy of a winter in the country, all white decay and white loneliness: days so short that it seemed as though the slow hours slept and, when awake, but dragged their whiter veils from grey dawn to grey twilight, so that dawn might once again be turned to night. And the short days were like white nights, sunless, as though the light were shining through velvet, as though life were breathing through velvet, velvet cold as the breath of death, the breath of death itself, striking down and embracing all things in its chill velvet. . . .
In the big house reigned the silent warmth of domesticity in big heated rooms and passages, with the rich browns of the heavy old carpets and curtains which had lived long and were beginning to grow worn in weary attitudes and folds of chamber contemplation, as though the dead stuffs looked down and dreamed and breathed in sympathy with
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