It was exactly ten days since his hurried unpacking had
strewn it with the contents of his portmanteaux. His
brushes and razors were spread out on the blotched marble of
the chest of drawers. A stack of newspapers had accumulated
on the centre table under the "electrolier", and half a
dozen paper novels lay on the mantelpiece among cigar-cases
and toilet bottles; but these traces of his passage had made
no mark on the featureless dulness of the room, its look of
being the makeshift setting of innumerable transient
collocations. 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.