iting there in that still room, whose
tranquillity seemed so much of its essence as to be more than a mere
absence of noise, waiting and gazing at the strip of sunlit High Street
that seemed lambent by contrast with the dimness within, Ishmael
conceived a dislike to Killigrew. The name sounded brisk, brutal even;
Ishmael was unaware that it was the fact that he had been told he would
like Killigrew which awaked his antagonism. Unconsciously he resented
that this old man should take advantage of knowing more of books to
think that therefore he knew what he, Ishmael, would and would not like.

They all three waited; the Parson ran a finger along the lines of
calf-bound books, then paused, Old Tring at his elbow. Ishmael was
forgotten, isolated in himself, and, without warning, in the irrational
way of such phases, he was overwhelmed by one of those strange periods
in which, though actually but a second or so, time seems to hold its
breath and the consciousness, muffled by some overwhelming dimness, is
arrested and stands alone, on a pin-point of eternity, without past or
future. It seemed to him that nothing would ever move again in the dim
room, where for this fraction of a second everything was motionless
except the dust motes that danced in the beam slanting through the low
window, wreathing this way and that like steam within the strip of
brightness, but ceasing to be visible at the edge as sharply as though
they ceased to exist--as though an impalpable line ruled in the air
would not allow the twisting coils to pass beyond, even when the pattern
demanded it. Ishmael stared at this aerial path of living light, his
mind hypnotised by it, and the remainder of the room by its contrasting
density seemed to fall away from him; out of a great distance came the
Parson's voice saying, "So you've got a first edition of the
Antiquities...." Followed the soft rubbing sound of one smooth book
being drawn out from between its companions, then the crisper noise of
large pages being turned.

The moment, which had seemed so intensely the present to Ishmael that
during it he had thought it could never cease to be, reeled and sank
into the past, leaving him with the feeling that time was once more in
motion, like a vast clock whose pendulum has stopped for one beat, only
to resume its swing again. At once it became possible that everything
should go on, the idea of the incursion of the boy Killigrew ceased to
be wildly chimerical, and