“The noise, you mean? Merely the fog-horn, dear—not Wotan’s wrath, nor Siegfried’s dragon….”
The fog was white at the window. They sat waiting. After a few seconds the sound came low, swelling, like the mooing of some great sea animal, alone, the last of the monsters. The whole fog gave off the sound for a second or two, then it died down into an intense silence. Siegmund and Helena looked at each other. His eyes were full of trouble. To see a big, strong man anxious-eyed as a child because of a strange sound amused her. But he was tired.
“I assure you, it is only a fog-horn,” she laughed.
“Of course. But it is a depressing sort of sound.”
“Is it?” she said curiously. “Why? Well—yes—I think I can understand its being so to some people. It’s something like the call of the horn across the sea to Tristan.”
She hummed softly, then three times she sang the horn-call. Siegmund, with his face expressionless as a mask, sat staring out at the mist. The boom of the siren broke in upon them. To him, the sound was full of fatality. Helena waited till the noise died down, then she repeated her horn-call.
“Yet it is very much like the fog-horn,” she said, curiously interested.
“This time next week, Helena!” he said.
She suddenly went heavy, and stretched across to clasp his hand as it lay upon the table.
“I shall be calling to you from Cornwall,” she said.