'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?' 'Yes,' said I, 'yes, Leda.' 'What was the color,' says she, 'of the poison-cloud which destroyed the world?' 'Purple, Leda,' said I. 'And it had a smell like almonds or peach blossoms, did it not?' says she. 'Yes,' said I, 'yes.' 'Then,' says she, 'there is _another_ eruption. Every now and again I seem to scent strange whiffs like that ... and there is a purple vapour in the East which glows and glows ... just see if you can see it....' I flew across the room to an east window, threw up the grimy sash, and looked. But the view was barred by the plain brick back of a tall warehouse. I rushed back, gasped to her to wait, rushed down the two stairs, and out upon the Hard. For a minute I ran dodging wildly about, seeking a purview to the East, and finally ran up the dockyard, behind the storehouses to the Semaphore, and reached the top, panting for life. I looked abroad. The morning sky, but for a bank of cloud to the north-west, was cloudless, the sun blazing in a region of clear azure pallor. And back again I flew. 'I cannot see it...!' I cried. 'Then it has not tlavelled far enough to the north-west yet,' she said with decision. 'My wife!' I cried: 'you are my wife now!' 'Am I?' says she: 'at last? Are you glad?... But shall I not soon die?' 'No! You can escape! My home! My heart! If only for an hour or two, then death--just think, together--on the same couch, for ever, heart to heart--how sweet!' 'Yes! how sweet! But how escape?'