d were "waxen." How
true that was! He had never thought of it before. He thought of it now.

He sat still, so still that every muscle ached, because if you wish to
hear the sounds that infest silence, you must be very still indeed. He
thought of Edward, and of the string he had meant to tie to one of the
figures.

"That wouldn't be needed," he told himself. And his ears ached with
listening--listening for the sound that, it seemed, _must_ break at last
from that crowded silence.

He never knew how long he sat there. To move, to go up, to batter at the
door and clamour to be let out--that one could have done if one had had
a lantern, or even a full matchbox. But in the dark, not knowing the
turnings, to feel one's way among these things that were so like life
and yet were not alive--to touch, perhaps, these faces that were not
dead, and yet felt like death. His heart beat heavily in his throat at
the thought.

No, he must sit still till morning. He had been hypnotised into this
state, he told himself, by Edward, no doubt; it was not natural to him.

Then suddenly the silence was shattered. In the dark something moved.
And, after those sounds that the silence teemed with, the noise seemed
to him thunder-loud. Yet it was only a very, very little sound, just the
rustling of drapery, as though something had turned in its sleep. And
there was a sigh--not far off.

Vincent's muscles and tendons tightened like fine-drawn wire. He
listened. There was nothing more: only the silence, the thick silence.

The sound had seemed to come from a part of the vault where, long ago,
when there was light, he had seen a grave being dug for the body of a
young girl martyr.

"I will get up and go out," said Vincent. "I have three matches. I am
off my head. I shall really be nervous presently if I don't look out."

He got up and struck a match, refused his eyes the sight of the corpse
whose waxen face he had felt in the blackness, and made his way through
the crowd of figures. By the match's flicker they seemed to make way for
him, to turn their heads to look after him. The match lasted till he got
to a turn of the rock-hewn passage. His next match showed him the burial
scene: the little, thin body of the martyr, palm in hand, lying on the
rock floor in patient waiting, the grave-digger, the mourners. Some
standing, some kneeling, one crouched on the ground.

This was where that sound had come from, that rustle, that sigh. He had
tho