It was so near. Had I
been a child, I might have expressed some of my sensation and distress,
by saying that the sky had lost its roof.
Later, I turned, and peered about me, into the room. Everywhere, it was
covered with a thin shroud of the all-pervading white. I could see it
but dimly, by reason of the somber light that now lit the world. It
appeared to cling to the ruined walls; and the thick, soft dust of the
years, that covered the floor knee-deep, was nowhere visible. The snow
must have blown in through the open framework of the windows. Yet, in no
place had it drifted; but lay everywhere about the great, old room,
smooth and level. Moreover, there had been no wind these many thousand
years. But there was the snow,[8] as I have told.
And all the earth was silent. And there was a cold, such as no living
man can ever have known.
The earth was now illuminated, by day, with a most doleful light,
beyond my power to describe. It seemed as though I looked at the great
plain, through the medium of a bronze-tinted sea.
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