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.
The violence of the paroxysm would pass, and she would grow calmer, drawing long, shuddering breaths as she struggled back to self-control.
Then a quick panting would begin and grow faster and faster, till another burst of sobs shook her like a leaf in the storm.
In very awe of such great grief Paul stood awhile silently over her, the tears filling his own eyes and running down his cheeks unheeded.

She had wept something like this, though nothing like so long or so bitterly, on former occasions, when he had urged her with special vehemence to fix a day when she would fulfil her promise to be his wife.
Now, as he pondered the piteous spectacle before him, the thought came over him that his first reverential instinct concerning her, that despite her resumption of a mortal form she was something more than mortal, was true, and that he had done wrong in so far forgetting it as to urge her to be his wife as if she were merely a woman like others.