"Oh, must I?" said Jeanie wistfully. "I never sleep much on these hot nights. One can't breath so well lying down." Avery looked at her with quick anxiety, but she had turned to Piers and was leaning against him with a gentle coaxing air. "Please, dear Piers, would it tire you to play to us?" she begged. He looked down at her for a moment as if he would refuse; then very gently he laid his hand on her head, pressing back the heavy, clustering hair from her forehead to look into her soft eyes. "What do you want me to play?" he said. She made a wide gesture of the hands and let them fall. "Something big," she said. "Something to take to bed with us and give us happy dreams." His lips--those mobile, sensitive lips--curved in a smile that made Avery avert her eyes with a sudden hot pang. He released Jeanie, and turned away to the door. "I'll see what I can do," he said. "You had better go into the garden--you and Avery." They went, though Jeanie looked as if she would have preferred to accompany him to the music-room. It was little cooler on the terrace than in the house. The heat brooded over all, dense, black, threatening. "I hope it will rain soon," said Jeanie, drawing her chair close to Avery's. "There will be a storm when it does," Avery said. "I like storms, don't you?" said Jeanie. Avery shook her head. "No, dear." She was listening in tense expectancy, waiting with a dread that was almost insupportable for the music that Piers was about to make. They were close to the open French window of the music-room, but there was no light within. Piers was evidently sitting there silent in the darkness. Her pulses were beating violently. Why did he sit so still? Why was there no sound? A flash of lightning quivered above the tree-tops and was gone. Jeanie drew in her breath, saying no word. Avery shrank and closed her eyes. She could hear her heart beating audibly, like the throbbing of a distant drum. The suspense was terrible. There came from far away the growl and mutter of the rising storm. The leaves of the garden began to tremble. And then, ere that roll of distant thunder had died away, another sound came through the darkness--a sound that was almost terrifying in its suddenness, and the grand piano began to speak. What music it uttered, Avery knew not. It was such as she had never heard before. It was unearthly, it was devilish, a fiendish chorus that was like the laughter of a thousand demons--a pandemonium that shocked her unutterably. Just as once he had drawn aside for her the veil that shrouded the Holy Place, so now he rent open the gates of hell and showed her the horrors of the prison-house, forcing her to look upon them, forcing her to understand.