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 with this acceptance of it Killigrew himself
was in the room.

The vibrant path was no longer bright to the shutting-off of all else,
material and mental; the Parson looked up from his first edition; Old
Tring's hand, advancing, came into the strip of light, and seemed to
spring to life, swelled to huge dimensions, became of a glowing
whiteness. Killigrew, red-headed, freckled, standing with an air of
surly self-protection, suddenly raised his light lashes to give the
sweetest smile Ishmael had ever seen. Always, even in moments of