that sable colour

I liked the room and the red carnations on the table and the way he talked and his clothes'especially his clothes. It was a pity about my clothes, but anyway they were black. 'She wore black. Men delighted in that sable colour, or lack of colour.' A man called 'Coronet' wrote that, or was it a man called 'A Peer'''

'Jean Rhys, from Voyage in the Dark, 1934.