He turned right, stepping over shards of glass, and gave a start: his heart began to pound and he felt himself trembling. Someone was standing to the right in a dark recess, someone who wasn't moving. He tried to call out something that sounded like "hello," but his voice was constricted with fear, and he was hampered by the pounding of his heart. The figure in the darkness didn't move; it was holding something in its hands that looked like a stick--he approached hesitantly, and even when he realized it was a statue his heart still kept pounding. He drew nearer and saw in the dim light that it was a stone angel with flowing locks, holding a lily in its hand. He leaned forward until his chin was almost touching the figure's chest and stared into its face for a long time with a strange joy, the first face he's encountered in that city: the stony visage of an angel, smiling tenderly, painfully. Its face and hair were covered with thick, gray dust, the blind eye sockets too were filled with dark flakes; he blew them away cautiously, almost lovingly, smiling now himself, freeing the entire tender oval from dust, and suddenly he saw that the smile was made of plaster. The grime had conferred upon its lines the nobility of the original from which the reproduction had been cast, but he continued blowing, clearing off the luxurious locks, the chest, the flowing robe, and cleaned off the plaster lily with tiny, cautious puffs. The joy that had filled him at the sight of the smiling stone face died away as the garish colors came into view, the ghastly paint of the piety industry, the golden borders of the robe--and suddenly the face's smile seemed as dead to him as the all-too-flowing hair. He turned away slowly into the hall, looking for the door to the basement. His heart was no longer pounding.
--The Silent Angel