At last Zulima became wholly absorbed in that which she was writing. Her pen flew across the paper, her eyes grew luminous with ardent light. She no longer startled at some new outbreak of the storm; when the lightning flashed over her, she only wrote the faster, as if inspired by the flame. A great magnolia-tree near the window, with all its garniture of leaves, its massive branches and broad white blossoms, was uprooted and hurled down upon the house, shaking it furiously in every timber. That instant Zulima was placing her name to the letter, which in all this whirl of the elements she had written to her husband. She dropped the pen with a scream, and darted toward the window. The sash was broken and choked up by a great branch of the magnolia, through whose dark leaves and white blossoms, crushed and broken together, the lightning shot like a storm of lurid arrows. The broken glass, the rent foliage, white and green, fell around Zulima as she thrust aside the massive bough with both hands, and looked forth. It was completely uptorn, that fine old tree! The fresh earth, matted to its roots, rose high in the air, dripping with rain, and its great trunk crushed the wicker garden-seat into atoms, where she and her husband had sat together the evening before his departure. Heart-sick and faint, Zulima drew back. The letter to her husband lay upon the table, and near it the taper flared, throwing a jet of flame over the delicate writing. Pale and trembling, for the fall of that old magnolia had terrified her like a prophecy, Zulima folded the paper and directed it. But how her hand shook; the name of her husband was blurred as she wrote it, and with a deep sigh she took up the sealing-wax and held it in the half-extinguished light. Her hand was very unsteady, and a drop or two of the hot wax fell upon her palm and wrist, burning into the delicate flesh like a blood-spot. Still, in her sad preoccupation, Zulima felt nothing of the pain, but sealed her letter just as her light flared out, and sat down in the gloom to wait for morning. Two weary hours she spent in that dark stillness, for the hurricane having done its work, passed off as suddenly as it had arisen, leaving the night hushed and still, like a giant lying down to rest after a hard fight. When the morning came, with its sweet breath and rosy light, Zulima arose. Hastily binding up her hair, and changing her dress, she took up her letter and left the house. All around the old mansion was littered with vestiges of the storm. She was obliged to make her way through branches heavy with drenched blossoms and young fruit; fragments of lusty vines that had cast their grateful shade around the dwelling but a day before; oak boughs wrenched away from the neighboring groves, and masses of torn foliage that lay heaped upon the door-step and along the walk, she was compelled to traverse on her passage to the highway.