Grocery and delivery wagons came and went, rattling over the cobbles and car-tracks, while occasionally a whistle blew very far off.

At the corner of the street by a livery-stable a little boy in a flat-topped leather cap was calling incessantly for some unseen dog, whistling and slapping his knees.

An ex press-wagon stopped a few doors below the white house and the driver pulled down the back-board with a strident rattle of chains; the cable in its slot kept up an unceasing burr and clack while the cars themselves trundled up and down the street, starting and stopping with a jangling of bells, the jostled glass windows whirring in a prolonged vibrant note.

All these sounds played lightly over the steady muffled roar that seemed to come from all quarters at once; it was that deep murmur, that great minor diapason that always disengages itself from vast bodies, from mountains, from oceans, from forests, from sleeping armies.
The desire for movement, for diversion, for anything that would keep him from thinking was not to be resisted.

Vandover caught up his hat and fled from the room, not daring to look again at the easel.