Excerpt from Whispers Perhaps it was the ticking of the clock which presently disturbed the solitary occupant of the room - who, it might also have seemed, was the solitary occupant of the building, of all the build ings on the street. At any rate there was a noise less movement. The man lifted slightly from his stooped attitude. He removed his eyes from the book before him. He permitted one hand to descend until it lay on the table, within the Circle of light. If the Book of Life had been as open to him as the ancient volume he had been perusing, that hand which now lay within the circle of light - the only living thing visible, and it scarcely suggest ing the warm impulses of life - might well have fallen into an attitude of surrender, of relinquish ment. Or it might have been lifted, for once in its existence, with a gesture of supplication or prayer. For it was written that that hand should lie cold and rigid in death within the hour. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.