Human contact wears things out with disheartening slowness.
Things tarnish, too.

Little by little, the ceiling had darkened like a stormy sky.

The places on the whitish woodwork and the pink wallpaper that had been touched oftenest had become smudgy--the edge of the door, the paint around the lock of the closet and the wall alongside the window where one pulls the curtain cords.

A whole world of human beings had passed here like smoke, leaving nothing white but the window.
And I?
I am a man like every other man, just as that evening was like every other evening.
.

.