THE breeze, which at noon had barely rustled the chrysanthemums, an hour later was tossing the pampas plumes across the lawn, and whipping the great sapphire of the sea into broken green and white. There was something ruffling to temper in the dry, beating breath. Hammocks were empty, the garden deserted. The hardiest of the house-party huddled on the veranda behind the Samoan blinds that snapped in the heavy wind. It was not the “trade” blowing in from sea—salt and dreamy with far going—but a land wind driving down through the mountains, stinging with sharp odors of dust and dry leaves—the very dregs of summer. The sun went down through a wrack of broken clouds into a thundering ocean. To the party gathered around the hall hearth, and straggling up to the first turn of the stair, the garden appeared a writhing, twisting thing, crowded upon, and threatened by the raw, gray twilight. Bowed trees and lashing vines were the more piteous that there was no storm but the ceaseless wind streaming by, roaring across the roof, shaking the window-casings, beating the flowers flat. The wild night offered to those about the fire the opportunity of drawing together; but the uneasiness, the inexplicable, mutual distrust of people aware of strong cross-currents under the surface of living, separated them. Their common isolation, even their common shelter, failed to unite them. The curiosity, careless or eager, with which they had met one another on the first evening—the interest for inexperienced personalities—had been replaced by a sharp, personal thread in the web propinquity weaves. Each was no longer a watcher of, but an actor in, a drama, and each more or less dissatisfied with the part assigned him. Their undermined sociability was apparent in wandering eyes, shifting groups, flurries of talk running into blind alleys. Who could have helped through the interminable evening, would not. Julia refused to sing. Thair read. Longacre intrenched himself with round-cheeked Bessie Lewis against the fear of being asked to play. He was bored with his predicament, and puzzled as to why Florence had chosen to sit with Cissy and Holden. Florence, irresolute, wretchedly at odds with herself, hated the sight of this collection of people. She was glad to get away to her room. The great sound of the wind, surging by the windows, helped to lull her struggling motives; and waking in the night to a gush of roaring rain, she felt singularly at peace, consoled by the unhesitating strength of the storm. But the dull face of the next morning was a depressing outlook. The gray sheet of the storm blotted out dunes and sea. The close damp of the first rains, imperfectly dispersed by too lately kindled fires, filled the rooms with its vague discomfort. The house-party displayed the hectic amiability of people whose breeding does not permit them to betray their disgust at being, for a number of days, cooped up together between the same four walls.