Dead, dumb silence. Their four hands, not touching, lay loosely on
the oval table. Rip slept unutterably, shrouded head and body in his
cosy rug. So--till the last gleam of the fire faded. So--till another
twenty minutes had passed. The friends had not exchanged a word, had
scarcely made the slightest movement. Could a stranger have been
suddenly introduced into the black room, and have remained listening
attentively, he might easily have been deceived into the belief that,
but for himself, it was deserted. To both Valentine and Julian the
silence seemed progressive. With each gliding moment they could have
declared that it grew deeper, more dense, more prominent, even more
grotesque and living. There seemed to be a sort of pressure in it which
handled them more and more definitely. The sensation was interesting
and acute. Each gave himself to it, and each had a, perhaps deceptive,
consciousness of yielding up something, something impalpable, evanescent,
fluent. Valentine, more especially, felt as if he were pouring away from
himself, by this act of sitting, a vital liquid, and he thought with a
mental smile:

"Am I letting my soul out of its cage, here and now?"

"No doubt," his common sense replied; "no doubt this sensation is the
merest fancy."

He played with it in the darkness, and had no feeling of weariness.

Nearly an hour had passed in this morose way, when, with, it seemed,
appalling abruptness, Rip barked.

Although the bark was half stifled in rug, both Valentine and Julian