Chap­ter 10 begins in the still­ness of a qui­et mid­night, where a light­ning-rod sales­man makes his way down an emp­ty street. His leather valise is near­ly void, and yet he car­ries him­self with an ease that sug­gests a deep com­fort in the soli­tude around him. He paus­es at a store win­dow, his atten­tion imme­di­ate­ly drawn to the soft flut­ter of white moths as they dance in the cool air. Inside the win­dow, a sight holds him captive—a mas­sive block of ice from the Alas­ka Snow Com­pa­ny, care­ful­ly bal­anced on sawhors­es. With­in the ice, encased per­fect­ly, lies a stun­ning woman, seem­ing­ly frozen in time. The del­i­cate form, untouched by the years, evokes mem­o­ries of youth, beau­ty, and the unat­tain­able, as if she had been pre­served for­ev­er in the cold embrace of snow, iso­lat­ed from the pass­ing world.

The woman’s beau­ty is strik­ing, with hair as white as the ice that sur­rounds her, giv­ing her an ethe­re­al allure. She seems to belong not to the present world but to a time­less place, one where art and nature merge. The sales­man recalls his encoun­ters with oth­er cap­ti­vat­ing women, recall­ing the stun­ning mar­ble sculp­tures he saw in Rome, the vivid­ly paint­ed fig­ures in the Lou­vre, and a mys­te­ri­ous shad­owy fig­ure that had enchant­ed him dur­ing his youth. All these images con­verge in the woman before him, her frozen form com­bin­ing the raw phys­i­cal beau­ty of the sculp­tures with an essence that can­not be ful­ly cap­tured or under­stood. This enig­mat­ic qual­i­ty only deep­ens the salesman’s fas­ci­na­tion, as he real­izes that this fig­ure rep­re­sents some­thing far beyond phys­i­cal appearance—it is as though she is a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of time­less­ness itself, embody­ing a beau­ty that exists out­side the con­straints of time.

As he observes her, he begins to con­tem­plate her fea­tures in greater detail. The thought occurs to him that once the ice is bro­ken away, her hair might reveal a hid­den depth of col­or that was pre­vi­ous­ly con­cealed. He also won­ders about her height—whether the ice has dis­tort­ed her true size due to its refract­ing prop­er­ties. Yet, all of these thoughts feel sec­ondary to the con­nec­tion he sens­es with her, some­thing far more pro­found than mere phys­i­cal details. He begins to feel an intense, almost intu­itive cer­tain­ty that if she were to awak­en, he would rec­og­nize her instantly—particularly the col­or of her eyes, even though they remain hid­den by the lay­ers of ice. This con­nec­tion, though unspo­ken and unac­knowl­edged, seems to be the most pow­er­ful aspect of the entire expe­ri­ence, mak­ing him feel as if he is tied to this frozen woman in ways he can­not yet ful­ly com­pre­hend.

With each pass­ing moment, a sense of warmth and antic­i­pa­tion builds with­in him. The notion cross­es his mind, almost as a pass­ing fan­ta­sy, that if he were to touch the glassy sur­face of the ice, the warmth from his hand might be enough to melt it, even if only slight­ly. This thought pulls him clos­er, his heart rac­ing with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a momen­tary con­nec­tion between his warmth and her cold, frozen state. The sur­re­al­ness of this moment, a blend of extremes—heat meet­ing cold, life meet­ing death, the known and the unknown—compels him to move for­ward. His hand hov­ers near the door, and as it swings open with ease, the frigid air from inside the shop rush­es to greet him, min­gling with the warmth that still lingers on his skin. He steps across the thresh­old, drawn inex­orably into the mys­tery that sur­rounds the ice, sur­ren­der­ing to its mag­net­ic pull. Mean­while, out­side the win­dow, the moths con­tin­ue to flut­ter against the glass, unaware of the dra­ma unfold­ing inside. This strange, cap­ti­vat­ing scene—where heat, cold, and mys­tery intersect—leaves a lin­ger­ing sense of intrigue, as if the moment itself holds secrets that may soon be revealed. The chap­ter ends on a note of sus­pend­ed ten­sion, full of antic­i­pa­tion and uncer­tain­ty, leav­ing read­ers to won­der what will hap­pen next in the salesman’s inter­ac­tion with this frozen woman.