Helena looked up at him, from pouring out the tea. His little anxious
look of distress amused her.

'The noise, you mean? Merely the fog-horn, dear--not Wotan's wrath, nor
Siegfried's dragon....'

The fog was white at the window. They sat waiting. After a few seconds
the sound came low, swelling, like the mooing of some great sea animal,
alone, the last of the monsters. The whole fog gave off the sound for a
second or two, then it died down into an intense silence. Siegmund and
Helena looked at each other. His eyes were full of trouble. To see a
big, strong man anxious-eyed as a child because of a strange sound
amused her. But he was tired.

'I assure you, it _is_ only a fog-horn,' she laughed.

'Of course. But it is a depressing sort of sound.'

'Is it?' she said curiously. 'Why? Well--yes--I think I can understand
its being so to some people. It's something like the call of the horn
across the sea to Tristan.'

She hummed softly, then three times she sang the horn-call. Siegmund,
with his face expressionless as a mask, sat staring out at the mist. The
boom of the siren broke in upon them. To him, the sound was full of
fatality. Helena waited till the noise died down, then she repeated her
horn-call.

'Yet it is very much like the fog-horn,' she said, curiously interested.