2.
The afternoon was already darkening into dusk one day late in January
when Philip Ashe stood in the hallway of a squalid tenement house,
looking out into a dingy court. The place was surrounded by tall
buildings which cut off the light and made day shorter than nature had
intended, an effect which was not lessened by the clothes drying
smokily on lines above. In one corner of the court yawned like the
entrance to a cave the mouth of the passageway by which it was entered.
In another stood a dilapidated handcart in which some dweller there was
accustomed to carry abroad his rubbishy wares. The windows were for the
most part curtainless, rising row above row with an aspect of
wretchedness which gave Ashe a sense of discomfort so strong as almost
to be physical. Here and there rags and old hats did duty instead of
glass; some windows were open, framing slatternly women.
These women were stupidly quiet. Ashe wondered if they would have
talked to each other across the court if he had not been in sight, or
if the gathering dusk silenced them. One of them was smoking a short
black pipe, and once let fall a spark upon the head of another idler a
couple of floors below.
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