Only low sounds were ever heard, only almost soundless movements made.

The two men seated themselves and talked calmly while the rain pattered on the window panes and streaming down them seemed to shut out the world.
What the Vicar realised was that, since his visitor had announced that he had come because he remembered their old though slight acquaintance, he had obviously come for some purpose to which the connection formed a sort of support or background.

This man, whose modernity of bearing and externals seemed to separate them by a lifetime of experience, clearly belonged to the London which surrounded and enclosed his own silences with civilised roar and the tumult of swift passings.

On the surface the small, dingy book-crammed study obviously held nothing this outer world could require.

The Vicar said as much courteously and he glanced round the room as he spoke, gently smiling.
"But it is exactly this which brings me," Lord Coombe answered.
With great clearness and never raising the note of quiet to which the walls were accustomed, he made his explanation.