“Julius...!” came faintly from the window, as Mrs. LeVallon with a sudden gesture drew the curtain to shut out the darkness. She turned towards us. “Julius!” And her voice, using the tone I had heard before when she fled past me up that meadow slope, sounded as from some space beyond the walls. I looked up, my nerves on the alert, for it came to me that she was at the limit of endurance and that something now must break in her. Julius moved over to her side, while she put her hands out first to welcome him, then half to keep him off. He spoke no word. He took her outstretched hands in both of his, leading her back a little nearer towards the centre of the room. “Julius,” she whispered, “what frightens me to-night? I’m all a-shiver. There’s something coming?--but what is it? And why do I seem to know, yet not to know?” He answered her quietly, the voice deep with tenderness: “We three are here together”--I saw the shining smile I knew of old--“and there is no cause to feel afraid. You are tired with your long, long waiting.” And he meant, I knew, the long fatigue of ages that she apprehended, but did not grasp fully yet. She was Mrs. LeVallon still. “I’m both hot and cold together, and all oppressed,” she went on; “like a fever it is--icy and yet on fire. I can’t get at myself, to keep it still. Julius ... what is it?” The whisper held somehow for me the potentiality of scream. Then, taking his two hands closer, she raised her voice with startling suddenness. “Julius,” she cried, “I know what frightens me--it’s _you!_ What are you to-night?” She looked searchingly a moment into his face. “And what is this thing that’s going to happen to you? I hear it coming nearer--outside”--she moved further from the curtained window with small, rushing steps, looking back across her shoulder--“all down the valley from the mountains, those awful mountains. Oh, Julius, it’s coming--for you--my husband----! And for him,” she added, laying her eyes upon me like a flame. I thought the tears must come, but she held them back, looking appealingly at me, and clutching Julius as though he would slip from her. Then, with a quick movement and a little gust of curious laughter, she clapped her hand upon her mouth to stop the words. Something she meant to say to me was left unspoken, she was ashamed of the momentary weakness. “Mrs. LeVallon” was still uppermost. “Julius,” she added more softly, “there’s something about to-night I haven’t known since childhood. There’s such heat and--oh, hark!”--she stopped a moment, holding up her finger--“there’s a sound--like riggin’ in the wind. But it ain’t wind. What is it, Julius? And why is that wonderful?” Yet no sound issued from the quiet valley; it was as still as death. Even the sighing of the breeze had ceased about the walls.