The latter did not
attempt to stop him.
The people in the streets were, for the most part, either standing
stock-still, or moving slowly forward in a groping sort of fashion.
Darrow, for the second time, noticed how analogous to the deprivation of
sight was the total deprivation of hearing and feeling vibration.
Traffic was at a standstill. People's faces were bewildered, for the most
part; though here and there one showed contorted with the hysteria of
fright, or exalted with some other, probably religious, emotion. The same
impression of ghostliness came to Darrow here as in the Atlas Building.
Visual causes were not producing their wonted aural effect.
On the street corner a peanut vender's little whistle sent aloft bravely
its jet of steam; the bells on a ragpicker's cart swung merrily back and
forth on their strap; a big truck, whose driver was either undaunted or
drunk, banged and clattered and rattled over the rough cobbles of a side
street--but no sound came from any one of them.
This complete severance of one cause and effect was sufficient to
discredit all natural laws. No other cause and effect was certain.
Everywhere people were touching things to see if they were solid, or wet,
or soft, or hard, as the case might be. Even Darrow felt, absurdly enough,
that it would not be greatly serious to jump off the top of any building
into the street.
Darrow swung confidently enough down the street.
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