All at once she started, for the old man’s voice was cut by a sudden gust of wind.  A moment before, the utter silence had been almost intolerable, and now a storm seemed to have fallen upon them.  The trees all around them rocked in the wind; they heard the branches creak; and they heard the hissing of the leaves.  They were in the midst of a hurricane.  And they felt the earth sway as it resisted the straining roots of great trees, which seemed to be dragged up by the force of the furious gale.  Whistling and roaring, the wind stormed all about them, and the doctor, raising his voice, tried in vain to command it.  But the strangest thing of all was that, where they stood, there was no sign of the raging blast.  The air immediately about them was as still as it had been before, and not a hair on Susie’s head was moved.  And it was terrible to hear the tumult, and yet to be in a calm that was almost unnatural.

On a sudden, Dr Porhoet raised his voice, and with a sternness they had never heard in it before, cried out in that unknown language.  Then he called upon Margaret.  He called her name three times.  In the uproar Susie could scarcely hear.  Terror had seized her again, but in her confusion she remembered his command, and she dared not move.

‘Margaret, Margaret, Margaret.’

Without a pause between, as quickly as a stone falls to the ground, the din which was all about them ceased.  There was no gradual diminution.  But at one moment there was a roaring hurricane and at the next a silence so complete that it might have been the silence of death.

And then, seeming to come out of nothingness, extraordinarily, they heard with a curious distinctness the sound of a woman weeping.  Susie’s heart stood still.  They heard the sound of a woman weeping, and they recognized the voice of Margaret.  A groan of anguish burst from Arthur’s lips, and he was on the point of starting forward.  But quickly Dr Porhoet put out his hand to prevent him.  The sound was heartrending, the sobbing of a woman who had lost all hope, the sobbing of a woman terrified.  If Susie had been able to stir, she would have put her hands to her ears to shut out the ghastly agony of it.

And in a moment, notwithstanding the heavy darkness of the starless night, Arthur saw her.  She was seated on the stone bench as when last he had spoken with her.  In her anguish she sought not to hide her face.  She looked at the ground, and the tears fell down her cheeks.  Her bosom heaved with the pain of her weeping.

Then Arthur knew that all his suspicions were justified.

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