...of suspense

The silence in the room was like that silence in the kitchen when, on a drowsy afternoon, the ticking of the clock would stop - and there would steal over her a mysterious uneasiness that lasted until she realized what was wrong. A few times before she had known such silence - once in the Sears and Roebuck store the moment before she suddenly became a thief, and again that April afternoon in the MacKeans' garage. It was the forewarning hush that comes before an unknown trouble, a silence caused, not by lack of sounds, but by a waiting, a suspense. The soldier did not take those strange eyes from her and she was scared.

[The Member Of The Wedding, McCullers, C.]