Lydia sprang to her feet. “I must go home at once, Mr Brood. She will be dreadfully frightened. I----” There came another deafening crash. The glare filled the room with a brilliant, greenish hue. Ranjab was standing at the window, holding the curtains apart while he peered upward across the space that separated them from the apartment building beyond the court. “Take me home, Frederic!” cried Lydia frantically. She ran toward the door. “Let me telephone to your mother, Lyddy,” he cried, hurrying after her into the hall. “No! no! no!” she gasped as she ran. “Don't come with me if you----” “I will come!” he exclaimed, as they raced down the stairs. “Don't be frightened, darling. It's all right. Listen to me! Mrs Desmond is as safe as------” “Oh, Freddy, Freddy!” she wailed, breaking under a strain that he was not by way of comprehending. “Oh, Freddy dear!” Her nerves gave way. She was sobbing convulsively when they came to the lower hall. In great distress he clasped her in his arms, mumbling incoherent words of love, encouragement--even ridicule for the fear she betrayed. Far from his mind was the real cause of her unhappy plight. He held her close to his breast, and there she sobbed and trembled as with a mighty, racking chill. Her fingers clutched his arm with the grip of one who clings to the edge of a precipice with death below. Her face was buried against his shoulder. “There! There!” he murmured, appalled by this wild display of fear. “Don't worry, darling. Everything is all right. Oh, you dear, dear girlie! Please, please! My little Lyddy!” “Take me home, Freddy--take me home,” she whispered brokenly. “I cannot stay here another second. Come, dearest--come home with me.” Still they stood there in the dark hall, clasped in each other's arms--stood there for many minutes without realising the lapse of time, thinking not of Mrs Desmond nor the storm that raged outside, but of the storm they were weathering together with the lightning racing through their veins, thunder in their heart-beats. A footstep in the hall. Frederic looked up, dazed, bewildered. Jones, the butler, was retreating through a door near by, having come upon them unexpectedly. “I--I beg pardon, sir. I------” “Oh, Jones! Listen! My raincoat--and father's, quick. And Miss Lydia's things. Yes, yes, it's all right, Jones. It's quite all right.” Frederic was calling out the sentences jerkily. “Quite all right,” repeated Jones, his throat swelling, his eyes suddenly dim. “Quite, sir. Yes, yes!” He rushed into the closet at the end of the hall, more grievously upset than he ever had been in all his life before. “You will come with me, Freddy?” she was whispering, clinging to him as one in panic. “Yes, yes. Don't be frightened, Lyddy. I--I know everything is all right now. I'm sure of it.” “Oh, I am sure, too, dear. I have always been sure,” she cried, and he understood, as she had understood.