"And, now that my eyes were partly opened, I noticed other things too
that puzzled me, first of which, I think, was the extraordinary silence
of the whole place. Positively, the town was muffled. Although the
streets were paved with cobbles the people moved about silently, softly,
with padded feet, like cats. Nothing made noise. All was hushed,
subdued, muted. The very voices were quiet, low-pitched like purring.
Nothing clamorous, vehement or emphatic seemed able to live in the
drowsy atmosphere of soft dreaming that soothed this little hill-town
into its sleep. It was like the woman at the inn--an outward repose
screening intense inner activity and purpose.

"Yet there was no sign of lethargy or sluggishness anywhere about it.
The people were active and alert. Only a magical and uncanny softness
lay over them all like a spell."

Vezin passed his hand across his eyes for a moment as though the memory
had become very vivid. His voice had run off into a whisper so that we
heard the last part with difficulty. He was telling a true thing
obviously, yet something that he both liked and hated telling.

"I went back to the inn," he continued presently in a louder voice, "and
dined. I felt a new strange world about me. My old world of reality
receded. Here, whether I liked it or no, was something new and
incomprehensible. I regretted having left the train so impulsively. An
adventure was upon me, and I loathed adventures as foreign to my nature.
Moreover, this was the beginning apparently of an adventure somewhere
deep within me, in a region I could not check or measure, and a feeling
of alarm mingled itself with my wonder--alarm for the stability of what
I had for forty years recognised as my 'personality.'