It was profound among the masses of the ilex trees; yet overhead there was still a cold shine of stars. The wind came on in heavy gusts, swaying the black-heaped shadows, so that they seemed to distort themselves, mouthing and mowing like chaotic giants. She did not dread them as she had the unreal voices, not even when their movement seemed momentarily to betray the presence of odd white-faced things crouched within their glooms. But these were tangible, at least--tricks of fancy that one could grapple and defy. Gradually all sense of them faded as she stood, and she lost herself in glowing dreams. The striking of the third quarter brought her with a shock to herself. Even as the resonant jangle ceased on the instant, cut off by a swooping blast, she could have thought she heard through the tumult a faint sound of wrangling voices, very distant, inarticulate, not to be detached from the general confusion; but it ceased as the wind fell; and she told herself that her fancy had again deceived her. But not for long now. Her whole soul thrilled in the thought of the rapturous reality that second by second must be approaching to claim her for its own. Suddenly an intense feeling of awe came over her--a thrill of hushed expectancy, as in that solemn moment of the Mass when the Host is elevated above the bowed and death-still congregation. Her eyes were on the velvet spaces--out of their silences dripped a sudden star, which, descending slowly, disappeared behind the trees. And on the instant there came a woman’s scream, harrowing, heart-piercing, rending the darkness. Once, and fainter, it was repeated; and then the wind took up the tale of fear and swept it onwards into obliteration. The watcher stood as if stricken into stone, all the blood in her body draining back upon her heart. No fancy--there could be none, in that horrible cry. Who had uttered it--and whence? It had come from the direction of the trees, down by the garden edge--O, God! O, God!--his time, his path!