They were small shadows whose footsteps and voices could be heard, but in each of them the same night, the same silence.

He got off the car.

In the country all was dead still.

Little stars shone high up; little stars spread far away in the flood-waters, a firmament below.

Everywhere the vastness and terror of the immense night which is roused and stirred for a brief while by the day, but which returns, and will remain at last eternal, holding everything in its silence and its living gloom.