Eve? I almost asked, though the woman looked nothing like Eve. She was plump, grandmotherly, with gray hair brushed into a bun—why did she make me think of tall, gaunt Eve? Then her dark eyes found me blankly and I saw the resemblance. She had the same ravaged gaze of a woman who had been harrowed and clawed to the soul. Like Eve, she could have been any age from fifty to seventy. It was all the same to her: like the melted clock, she had stopped permanently at four in the afternoon. When this town had died . . . however it died.
