Edmund Blair Leighton Off painting

Edmund Blair Leighton Off paintingFrancois Boucher The Marquise de Pompadour paintingFrancois Boucher Nude on a Sofa painting
THE GREAT HALL of King Haggard's castle, the clock struck six. Actwindows to let in the scouring wind. That was daytime.
But at night, as some trees hold a living light all day, hold it with the undersides of their leaves until long after sundown —so at night the castle was charged and swarming with darkness, alive with darkness. Then the great hall was cold for a reason; then the small sounds that slept by day woke up to patter and scratch in the corners. It was night when the old smell of the stones seemed to rise from far below the floor.
"Light a light," Molly Grue said. "Please, can you make a lightually, it was eleven minutes past midnight, but the hall was little darker than it had been at six o'clock, or at noon. Yet those who lived in the castle told time by the difference in the dark. There were hours when the hall was cold simply for want of warmth and gloomy for lack of light; when the air was stale and still, and the stones stank of old water because there