Page:Ethel Churchill 1.pdf/168

162 belonged to a town. The floor was blackened, as were the unpapered walls. The curtains, thin and scanty, had long merged their original red into a dusky brown. Ornaments there were none, for the crooked mirror could scarcely be called such: you started back at your own face, so grim was the shadow thrown over it, so rough was the complexion reflected. The dust had lain on its surface so long that it had become part even of the glass. A fire burned in the grate; but it rather indicated its presence by smoke, which stole forth in occasional puffs, than by its warmth. The air which the young student breathed was bitter with the vapour that had gradually gathered around him. His hands, small and delicate as a woman's, had long since assumed that dead white which marks extreme cold. Still he wrote on. He was too much engrossed in his own charmed employ not to be insensible for a time to all external influences: he might suffer afterwards, but now his mind was his kingdom. Ever and anon the cheek wore a deeper crimson, and the dark