Différence

But this room belonged to someone French, wine-drinking and sensible. People had never stayed up here all night making tea and exchanging wild guesses about salvation, as Russians would, whether they were honest or deceivers, whether they wanted to murder her and her grandfather or protect them. It could never have been stuffy in here, not really stuffy, as people like it who have been warmed since childhood in the winter months by great porcelain stoves in rooms with double windows.

Rebecca West The Birds Fall Down 1966