His nearest neighbour--I am speaking now of things showing some sort of animation--was an indolent volcano which smoked faintly all day with its head just above the northern horizon, and at night levelled at him, from amongst the clear stars, a dull red glow, expanding and collapsing spasmodically like the end of a gigantic cigar puffed at intermittently in the dark.

Axel Heyst was also a smoker; and when he lounged out on his veranda with his cheroot, the last thing before going to bed, he made in the night the same sort of glow and of the same size as that other one so many miles away.
In a sense, the volcano was company to him in the shades of the night--which were often too thick, one would think, to let a breath of air through.

There was seldom enough wind to blow a feather along.

On most evenings of the year Heyst could have sat outside with a naked candle to read one of the books left him by his late father.

It was not a mean store.