There was something sardonic, almost
sinister, in its appearance of having deliberately "made up"
for its anonymous part, all in noncommittal drabs and
browns, with a carpet and paper that nobody would remember,
and chairs and tables as impersonal as railway porters.
Darrow picked up the time-table and tossed it on to the
table. Then he rose to his feet, lit a cigar and went to
the window. Through the rain he could just discover the
face of a clock in a tall building beyond the railway roofs.
He pulled out his watch, compared the two time-pieces, and
started the hands of his with such a rush that they flew
past the hour and he had to make them repeat the circuit
more deliberately. He felt a quite disproportionate
irritation at the trifling blunder. When he had corrected
it he went back to his chair and threw himself down, leaning
back his head against his hands. Presently his cigar went
out, and he got up, hunted for the matches, lit it again and
returned to his seat.
The room was getting on his nerves. During the first few
days, while the skies were clear, he had not noticed it, or
had felt for it only the contemptuous indifference of the
traveller toward a provisional shelter. But now that he was
leaving it, was looking at it for the last time, it seemed
to have taken complete possession of his mind, to be soaking
itself into him like an ugly indelible blot.
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