For an instant he yielded his spirit to this sound of eternal striving. Then he said:
“Hermione!”
No one answered.
“Hermione!”
He raised his voice. He almost called the name.
Still there was no answer. Yet the silence seemed to tell him that she was near.
He did not call again. He waited a moment, then he stepped into the passage.
The room to which it led was the central room, or hall, of the palace—a vaulted chamber, high and narrow, opening to the sea at one end by the great doorway already mentioned, to the land beneath the cliff by a smaller doorway at the other. The faint light from without, penetrating through these facing doorways, showed to Artois a sort of lesser darkness, towards which he walked slowly, feeling his way along the wall. When he reached the hall he again stood still, trying to get accustomed to the strange and eerie obscurity, to pierce it with his eyes.
Now to his left, evidently within the building, and not far from where he stood, he heard almost loudly the striving of the sea. He heard the entering wave push through some narrow opening, search round the walls for egress, lift itself in a vain effort to emerge, fall back baffled, retreat, murmuring discontent, only to be succeeded by another eager wave. And this startling living noise of water filled him with a sensation of acute anxiety, almost of active fear.
“Hermione!” he said once more.