Strung fiercely to the thought of emptiness, it came upon him nevertheless, as he opened the door, with a curious chill sense of palpability; as if silence and emptiness could strike one in the face and make him falter.
The room was fireless and silent and unspeakably dreary.

Hughie had left a lamp burning upon the table.

The key he had found in the pocket of the old man's bathrobe lay beside it.
For an interval Kenny stood stock still, his color gone.

He faced strange ghosts.

Here in this faded room, with its mystery of books, he had known agonizing pity and torment, gusts of temper, selfish and unselfish, real and feigned, moments of triumphal composure that now in the emptiness it was his fate to remember with a sickening shudder of remorse.