“I like the mist,” he said, pressing her hand in his pocket.
“I don’t dislike it,” she replied, shrinking nearer to him.
“It puts us together by ourselves,” he said. She plodded alongside, bowing her head, not replying. He did not mind her silence.
“It couldn’t have happened better for us than this mist,” he said.
She laughed curiously, almost with a sound of tears.
“Why?” she asked, half tenderly, half bitterly.
“There is nothing else but you, and for you there is nothing else but me—look!”
He stood still. They were on the downs, so that Helena found herself quite alone with the man in a world of mist. Suddenly she flung herself sobbing against his breast. He held her closely, tenderly, not knowing what it was all about, but happy and unafraid.
In one hollow place the siren from the Needles seemed to bellow full in their ears. Both Siegmund and Helena felt their emotion too intense. They turned from it.
“What is the pitch?” asked Helena.
“Where it is horizontal? It slides up a chromatic scale,” said Siegmund.
“Yes, but the settled pitch—is it about E?”
“E!” exclaimed Siegmund. “More like F.”
“Nay, listen!” said Helena.
They stood still and waited till there came the long booing of the fog-horn.
“There!” exclaimed Siegmund, imitating the sound. “That is not E.” He repeated the sound. “It is F.”
“Surely it is E,” persisted Helena.
