Passion of Shadows

I looked a moment as she walked away, more delicately made than her sister but no weakling. That feeling of regret returned. The New Year's dinner, the great dark house with its brilliantly lit dining hall, the moldy relatives, the flame-shadowed crests around the fireplace, the stag antlers like gigantic thorns, the beautiful sisters, the snowbound estate, all seemed to be passing away. Altenburg was a painting lost in an attic corner among piles of junk slowly being covered by the breath ...