there are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. there is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city. there is a silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. there is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt. there is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately certain silence that can speak. its voice may be melancholy, but it is not always so; for the chair may have been left by left by a laughing child or the last notes of the last piano may have raucous and gay. whatever the mood or the circumstance, the the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows. it is a soundless echo.
the silence that belonged to to the slender little craft was, i thought, filled with malice--a silence holding the spirit of wanton mischief, like the quite smile of a vain woman exultant over a petty and vicious triumph. it was not that kind of silence.
