It was amazing to Boaz, this miraculous sensation of peace.

"Wait!" Then, bending his head as if listening to the winter wind,
"It's cold to-night. You've left the door open. But wait!" Leaning
down, his hand fell on a rope's end hanging by the chair. The
gesture was one continuous, undeviating movement of the hand. No
hesitation. No groping. How many hundreds, how many thousands of
times, had his hand schooled itself in that gesture!

A single strong pull. With a little _bang_ the front door had swung
to and latched itself. Not only the front door. The other door,
leading to the rear, had closed too and latched itself with a little
_bang_. And leaning forward from his chair, Boaz blew out the light.

There was not a sound in the shop. Outside, feet continued to go by,
ringing on the frozen road; voices were lifted; the wind hustled
about the corners of the wooden shell with a continuous, shrill note
of whistling. All of this outside, as on another planet. Within the
blackness of the shop the complete silence persisted,

Boaz listened. Sitting on the edge of his chair, half-crouching, his
head, with its long, unkempt, white hair, bent slightly to one side,
he concentrated upon this chambered silence the full powers of his
senses. He hardly breathed.

The other person in that room could not be breathing at all, it
seemed.

No, there was not a breath, not the stirring of a sole on wood, not
the infinitesimal rustle of any fabric. It was as if in this utter
stoppage of sound, even the blood had ceased to flow in the veins
and arteries of that man, who was like a rat caught in a trap.

It was appalling even to Boaz; even to the cat. Listening became
more than a labour. He began to have to fight against a growing
impulse to shout out loud, to leap, sprawl forward without aim in
that unstirred darkness--do something. Sweat rolled down from behind
his ears, into his shirt-collar. He gripped the chair-arms. To keep
quiet he sank his teeth into his lower lip. He would not! He would
not!

And of a sudden he heard before him, in the centre of the room, an
outburst of breath, an outrush from lungs in the extremity of pain,
thick, laborious, fearful. A coughing up of dammed air.

Pushing himself from the arms of the chair, Boaz leaped.

His fingers, passing swiftly through the air, closed on something.
It was a sheaf of hair, bristly and thick. It was a man's beard.

On the road outside, up and down the street for