It was about ten o'clock when he returned home. As he came in sight of
the house he saw by the light reflected from the sitting-room windows
that there was some one upon the piazza. As he came nearer he perceived
that it was Ida. She was sitting sidewise upon a long, cane-bottomed
settee, and her arms were thrown upon the back of it to form a sort of
pillow on which her head rested. His tread upon the turf was inaudible,
and she neither saw nor heard him as he approached, nor when, softly
mounting the steps, he stood over her.
She was indeed sobbing with such violence that she could not have been
easily sensible of anything external. Paul had never heard such piteous
weeping. He had never seen much of women's crying, and he did not know
what abandonment of grief their tender frames can sustain--grief that
seemingly would kill a man if he could feel it. Long, gurgling sobs
followed one another as the waves of the sea sweep over the head of a
straggling swimmer. Every now and then they were interrupted by sharp
cries of exquisite anguish, such as might be wrung out by the sudden
twist of a rack, and then would come a low, shrill crooning sound, almost
musical, beyond which it seemed grief could not go.
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