I think we were both getting a little mad.
"One day--it was the third of that nightmare life, so I learned afterwards, though for all I could have told then it might have been the three hundredth, for Time seemed to have fled from that house as from a dream, so that all things were tangled--I made a slip that came near to ending the matter, then and there.
"I had gone into that other room.

Jeanie had left her post for a moment, and the place was empty.
"I did not think what I was doing.

I had not closed my eyes that I can remember since the wife had died, and my brain and my senses were losing their hold of one another.

I went through my usual performance of talking loudly to the thing underneath the white sheet, and noisily patting the pillows and rattling the bottles on the table.
"On my return, he asked me how she was, and I answered, half in a dream, 'Oh, bonny, she's trying to read a little,' and he raised himself on his elbow and called out to her, and for answer there came back silence--not the silence that _is_ silence, but the silence that is as a voice.

I do not know if you understand what I mean by that.