Page:Firecrackers a realistic novel.pdf/78



In her own room Campaspe could always find repose and a satisfactory background for the variety of reflection which was her only serious form of self-indulgence. On this winter morning reclining on her chaise longue of white horse-hair, edged with vermilion, before the cheer of her grate-fire, she was unaware, apparently, for the heavy turquoise-blue curtains were drawn across the windows and the room was artificially illuminated, that slivers of sleet flung themselves across the street, like silver ribbons scattered by merry-makers at a carnival, and that heavy, low-hanging clouds masked the sky, giving it the appearance of a vast cathedral dome, painted by some cinquecento artist, of which the colours had dimmed and dulled in the passage of the years. Campaspe, indeed, engaged in plucking her eyebrows in this little chamber which retained only the pictures and bric-a-brac and bibelots to which she was warmly attached or newly drawn or entirely oblivious, was as isolated as Tut-Ankh-Amen in the sealed seclusion of his tomb, with the important distinction that, unlike the mummified emperor, she was alertly sentient, her agile mind hopping from one theme to another, as a bird