...of a barber

He walked up Preston Street, and found a barber on the left. He went in and was shaved soothingly in warm electric light. The barber did not talk, but beat up a rich sweet-scented lather with the brush on his face, and then scraped with the razor in a sacramental hush. Only once he asked, in a formal voice, 'Is the razor to your liking, sir?' and George Harvey Bone replied, 'Fine, thanks.' Thus these two, the barber with his own past and private life, and George Harvey Bone with his, met, touched, were silent with each other under electric light, and then parted never to meet again.

[Hangover Square, Hamilton, P.]