One of these women was Lady Macbeth, who never before experienced, what her husband always had in liability, those paintings of his fear, those flaws and starts, that objectivity of over-wrought imagination. But now this scene, which treads upon the threshold of the murder, shudders with the proximity of something bodiless on the corridors and stairs a spectral gleam is congealing into shapes not known to this world; the wild weather of the "sore night" has hunted the moon and stars out of the heaven; the rain rushes at the panes to get vindictive entrance; the wind utters personal threats at these violators of "the Lord's anointed temple;"-- "The obscure bird Clamor'd the livelong night." How finely seated in its place is that word "obscure"! Substitute for it the various reading, "obscene," and you destroy the sense which Shakspeare would convey of a creature heard but seldom seen at any time, sitting so moveless in the dark: not a leaf prates of its whereabout; the mysterious hooting seems to be one of the unexplained things of Nature. Lady Macbeth's breath itself is intent to listen,--"Hark!" Then, as her novel tremor passes off, she interprets it:-- "It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman, Which gives the stern'st good-night." Far away, through innocent hamlets, human watchmen go their rounds, and let their "All's well!" mix with the dreams of inviolate chambers. Here is a different bellman to invite an eternal hour to murder sleep. She listens again, and her nerves are tightened by the hand of silence. "He is about it." How awfully does Macbeth's voice come struggling back into this stillness, where the wife begins to feel something personal in the air! So does he. "Who's there? What, ho!" And she expects to see something that was not invited:-- "Alack! I am afraid they have awak'd, And 'tis not done: the attempt, and not the deed, Confounds us." Shakspeare makes us aware that Macbeth, after killing Duncan, must pass along a passage and descend some stairs to the next story. What a walk of a few moments, protracted into endless awe, with Duncan disembodied close at his heels! The brave soldier's feet weaken at the distance which his own soul creates. Will he ever annihilate a space that is made by a crime and reach his wife again? "I have done the deed! Did'st thou not hear a noise?" They listen, looking sidelong at each other:-- "I heard the owl scream, and the crickets cry. Did not you speak? When? Now. As I descended? Ay. Hark! Who lies i' the second chamber?"