IT was a sullen night in mid-August, following a breathless day and an angry sunset that had shed a copper-coloured glow above a bank of cloud. The great windows of the drawing-room of the Channel House were flung open wide, and on the terrace beneath the starless heaven sat the little group of intimates, which now included the placid lady of the little Kilburn house. Walter Herold, who had returned from Switzerland tanned and strong, told his adventures to Sir Oliver and Dr. Ransome, while John and Stella, a little way apart, listened idly. Lady Blount and Miss Lindon murmured irrelevancies concerning the curates of long ago and the present price of beef. They had many points at which the curves of their natures touched, such as mathematicians, with unique spasm of romance, call points of osculation. But for the voices all was still. From below, at the base of the cliff, came the lazy lapping of the sea against the rocks. Outside the glow of light cast by the illuminated drawing-room the world was pitch black. The air grew more and more oppressive. “I think there's going to be thunder,” said Lady Blount. “I hope not,” said Miss Lindon. “I know John thinks it foolish, but I'm terribly afraid of thunder.” “So does Sir Oliver; but I don't care. Whenever there's a thunder-storm, I go up to my room and put my head under the bedclothes until it 's over.” “Now is n't that remarkable, my dear,” said Miss Lindon--“I do exactly the same! I draw down the blinds, and hide scissors away in a drawer, and throw a woollen shawl over the steel fender, and then I put my head under the blankets. My Aunt Margery, I remember, invariably used to go and sit in the coal-cellar. But she was a strong-minded woman, and would put her foot on a black beetle as soon as look at it. I hope I'm fond of most of God's creatures, but a black beetle frightens me out of my wits.” “What do you think of thunder-storms, Stella?” John asked, knocking the ashes out of his pipe. “I'm rather frightened,” she confessed. “Not because I think they 'll hurt me.” She paused and sighed. “I never could understand them.” “What do you mean by understanding a thunderstorm?” he asked. “I don't know,” she answered. “You either understand things or you don't.” Herold broke in to spare her further explanation. “There was a splendid one the week before last in the mountains--a real _Walpurgisnacht_. It seemed as though hell had broken loose.” He described it in his vivid way. The elderly ladies looked at the glimmer of white shirt-front and the glowing cigarette-end by which alone he was revealed, and wondered at the heroical, or, as it seemed in the unconfessed depths of their souls, the God-defying qualities of male humanity. A few resounding splashes fell from the sky. The party rose hurriedly. “Gad! we 're in for it,” cried Sir Oliver. “Let us get indoors.”