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THE CONE
The night was hot and overcast, the sky red, rimmed with the
lingering sunset of mid-summer. They sat at the open window,
trying to fancy the air was fresher there. The trees and shrubs of
the garden stood stiff and dark; beyond in the roadway a gas-lamp
burnt, bright orange against the hazy blue of the evening.
Farther were the three lights of the railway signal against the
lowering sky. The man and woman spoke to one another in low tones.
"
He does not suspect?" said the man, a little nervously.
Not he," she said peevishly, as though that too irritated
"
her. "He thinks of nothing but the works and the prices of fuel.
He has no imagination, no poetry."
"
"
None of these men of iron have," he said sententiously.
They have no hearts."
"
He has not," she said. She turned her discontented
face towards the window. The distant sound of a roaring and
rushing drew nearer and grew in volume; the house quivered; one
heard the metallic rattle of the tender. As the train passed,
there was a glare of light above the cutting and a driving tumult
of smoke; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight black
oblongs--eight trucks--passed across the dim grey of the
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