seemed that the progress of events had stopped....

Then he began to listen for the sounds of the world outside, for
within here it seemed as if a silence of a very strange quality had
suddenly descended and enveloped them. It was as if a section--that
place in which he sat--had been cut out of time and space. It was
apart here, it was different altogether....

He began to be intensely and minutely conscious of the world
outside--so entirely conscious that he lost all perception of that at
which he stared; whether it was the paper, or the strong, motionless
hand, or the introspective face, he was afterwards unaware. But he
heard all the quiet roar of the London evening, and was able to
distinguish even the note of each instrument that helped to make up
that untiring, inconclusive orchestra. Far away to the northwards
sounded a great thoroughfare, the rolling of wheels, a myriad hoofs,
the pulse of motor vehicles, and the cries of street boys; upon all
these his attention dwelt as they came up through the outward windows
into that dead silent, lamp-lit room of which he had lost
consciousness. Again a hansom came up the street, with the rap of
hoofs, the swish of a whip, the wintry jingle of bells....

He began gently to consider these things, to perceive, rather than to
form, little inward pictures of what they signified; he saw the
lighted omnibus, the little swirl of faces round a news-board.

Then he began to consider what had brought him here; it seemed that he
saw himself, coming in his dark suit across the park, turning into the
thoroughfare and across it. He began to consider Amy; and it seemed to
him that in this intense and living silence he was conscious of her