"The fall?"
"Yes—when father was killed—and all the happiness fell down."
Then she said something wholly incomprehensible at the time, but which I understand better now. "Perhaps," she said, "I would have borne what you call 'the fall' less well if I hadn't known ... there are worse than tigers in the world's jungle."
I felt I was on the track of some truer understanding, and a secret excitement took hold of me. "How was it you came to know that?" I asked.
"It is a thing," she said, "that even happy women learn." Then, hurriedly, she went on: "And it ended—my happiness—before any stain or tarnish dimmed it. All bright and shining one moment, the next all vanished."
I watched the face I knew so well. Covertly, I watched it. Saw the delicate lineaments a little pinched with anxiety. The eyes veiled one moment, the next lifting wide as at a sudden call.
"What was that?" she said.
I heard nothing.
Oftenest that quick lift of heavy eyelids, and the flash of bright fixity, would come without any following of speech. And the eloquence of that silence, tense, glittering, wrought more upon my nerves than any words. All my body strung to attention, I listened with my soul.
No sound.