He turned away toward the windows.
In a few moments her fingers were again thrust redly through the crevices.
“Are you?” she whispered.
The Breton looked up.
Again there was silence.
“Do you know what it is?” she still whispered.
Once more he raised his eyes to the crevices above the finger-tips.
“It is a rain-drop, priest, iridescent—but trembling on the eaves’ edge.”
While these silences grew longer, they at the same time were drawing to an end. No stillness can last for long in this world so full of noises, and in time a second but greater restlessness lay hold of the wife. No longer petulant, she became irritable, and often impatiently moving her chair aside, she wandered about the room. And as time passed, this unrest of the wife increased until it came about that she could not sit for long beside the screen without getting up and moving uneasily, even wearily, about the room; now by a table, then back to the screen; her hands at one moment plucking flowers from their vases, in the next tossing the folds of the silken tapestries.
One day she suddenly drew her fingers from the crevices, started to cross the room, came back, and peremptorily ordered the Breton to go away and stay away.