Silence for three minutes: then she says:
'What is the matter?'
'Matter?' said I, 'nothing!'
'Tell me!' she says—with such an intensity and rage, as to make me shudder.
'There is nothing to tell, Leda!'
'Oh, but how can you be so cluel to me?' she cries, and ah, there was anguish in that voice! 'There is something to tell—there is! Don't I know it vely well by your voice?'
Ah, the thought took me then, how, on the morrow, she would ring, and have no answer; and she would ring again, and have no answer; and she would ring all day, and ring, and ring; and for ever she would ring, with white-flowing hair and the staring eye-balls of frenzy, battering reproaches at the doors of God, and the Universe would cry back to her howls and ravings only one eternal answer of Silence, of Silence. And as I thought of that—for very pity, for very pity, my God—I could not help sobbing aloud:
'May God pity you, woman!'
I do not know if she heard it: she must, I think, have heard: but no reply came; and there I, shivering like the sheeted dead, stood waiting for her next word, waiting long, dreading, hoping for, her voice, thinking that if she spoke and sobbed but once, I should drop dead, dead, where I stood, or bite my tongue through, or shriek the high laugh of distraction. But when at last, after quite thirty or forty minutes she spoke, her voice was perfectly firm and calm. She said:
'Are you there?'