He turned and walked over the strip of dingy carpet to the foot of the second flight of stairs. Listlessly, almost automatically, he moved; it would seem that purely by chance did he turn this way and not that. His hand slid along the rail and did not leave it, though the hall’s light was ample to see the way.
Above was semi-darkness, drifting down, almost to the foot of the stairs like a threatening fog. He hesitated before it, dully, enveloped in silence. Nothing could be more ordinary or familiar to him, yet he hesitated, feeling a strange new quality in the dim dreariness.
That was the time to fight it, he told himself, so plainly that he thought it was muttered words, though his lips did not move.