The Expensive Halo

It had been raining all day, but now a wild red sunset flooded the town
with uncanny light, so that the dripping black buildings stood glorified
and the hurrying crowds turned their heads, half-consciously, in uneasy
wonder at the magnificent west.

Mary Ellis stood by the kitchen table in the basement window, and the
light, reflected from the wet pavement, shone round her with a mild
radiance very different from the disturbing crimson of the angry sky. It
lit her grey hair to a halo, and made her ...