“Yes, I’m sure I’m safer.” He handed her the little brown dispatch case, which was really a Marconi listening machine for her deafness. She marched erect as ever. He shoved his hands deep in his overcoat pockets and slouched along beside her, as if he wouldn’t make his legs firm. The road curved down in front of them, clean and pale with snow under the lamps. A motor car came churning up. A few dark figures slipped away into the dark recesses of the houses, like fishes among rocks above a sea bed of white sand. On the left was a tuft of trees sloping upward into the dark. He kept looking around, pushing out his finely shaped chin and his hooked nose as if he were listening for something. He could still hear the motor car climbing on to the Heath. Below was the yellow, foul-smelling glare of the Hampstead tube station. On the right the trees. The girl, with her alert, pink-and-white face, looked at him sharply, inquisitively. She had an odd, nymphlike inquisitiveness, sometimes like a bird, sometimes a squirrel, sometimes a rabbit; never quite like a woman. At last he stood still, as if he would go no farther. There was a curious, baffled grin on his smooth, cream-colored face. “James,” he said loudly to her, leaning toward her ear. “Do you hear somebody _laughing_?” “Laughing?” she retorted quickly. “Who’s laughing?” “I don’t know. _Somebody!_” he shouted, showing his teeth at her in a very odd way. “No, I hear nobody,” she announced. “But it’s most _extraordinary_!” he cried, his voice slurring up and down. “Put on your machine.” “Put it on?” she retorted. “What for?” “To see if you can _hear_ it,” he cried. “Hear what?” “The _laughing_. Somebody laughing. It’s most _extraordinary_.” She gave her odd little chuckle and handed him her machine. He held it while she opened the lid and attached the wires, putting the band over her head and the receivers at her ears, like a wireless operator. Crumbs of snow fell down the cold darkness. She switched on; little yellow lights in glass tubes shone in the machine. She was connected, she was listening. He stood with his head ducked, his hands shoved down in his overcoat pockets. Suddenly he lifted his face and gave the weirdest, slightly neighing laugh, uncovering his strong, spaced teeth and arching his black brows, and watching her with queer, gleaming, goatlike eyes. She seemed a little dismayed. “There!” he said. “Didn’t you hear it?” “I heard _you_!” she said, in a tone which conveyed that _that_ was enough. “But didn’t you hear _it_?” he cried, unfurling his lips oddly again. “No!” she said. He looked at her vindictively, and stood again with ducked head. She remained erect, her fur hat in her hand, her fine bobbed hair banded with the machine band and catching crumbs of snow, her odd, bright-eyed, deaf nymph’s face lifted with blank listening.