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.

16

Arthur would not leave the little village of Venning. Neither Susie nor
the doctor could get him to make any decision. None of them spoke of the
night which they had spent in the woods of Skene; but it coloured all
their thoughts, and they were not free for a single moment from the
ghastly memory of it. They seemed still to hear the sound of that
passionate weeping. Arthur was moody. When he was with them, he spoke
little; he opposed a stubborn resistance to their efforts at diverting
his mind. He spent long hours by himself, in the country, and they had no
idea what he did. Susie was terribly anxious. He had lost his balance so
completely that she was prepa