loweringlowerdown from chimney-pots , making a soft black drizzledrizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes -- gone into mourning , one might imagine , for the death of the sun .
Wild-eyed , choking clerks stampededstampedethrough the passages full of smokesmoke, silk hats and elderly business men could be seen rollingrollindependently down the stairs .
When Mrs. Hall wentgoto clear away the stranger 's lunch , her ideaideathat his mouth must also have been cut or disfigured in the accident she supposed him to have suffered , was confirmedconfirm, for he was smokingsmokea pipe , and all the time that she was in the room he never loosened the silk muffler he had wrapped round the lower part of his face to putputthe mouthpiece to his lips .
The smokesmokefrom the firefireat times neglectedneglectthe clay chimney and wreathedwreatheinto the room , and this flimsy chimney of clay and sticks made endless threats to set ablaze the whole establishment .
Mr. Pontellier finally litlighta cigar and began to smokesmoke, letting the paper dragdragidly from his hand .
He lightedlighta match nonchalantly , by the artfully simple method of pinchingpinchthe head of it with his fingernails , leanedleannegligently against the wall of the bunk-house , and regardedregardthe group incuriously while he smokedsmoke.
Smokesmokedrifted lazily from a multitude of quaint chimneys .
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying , smokingsmoke, as was his custom , innumerable cigarettes , Lord Henry Wotton could just catchcatchthe gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum , whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs ; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flittedflitacross the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window , producing a kind of momentary Japanese effecteffect, and making him thinkthinkof those pallid , jade-faced painters of Tokyo who , through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile , seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion .