noon
Nor could I feel that he was a dying man . He would live on ... . I could not as yet sort and appraise , reduce to order the possessions he had wished to turn over to me . It was noon , and people were walking past me in the watery , diluted sunlight , men in black coats and top hats and women in bizarre , complicated costumes bright with colour . I had reached the more respectable portion of the city , where the churches were emptying . These very people , whom not long ago I would have acknowledged as my own kind , now seemed mildly animated automatons , wax figures . The day was like hundreds of Sundays I had known , the city familiar , yet passing strange .