“She is preferable to the other,” said Joan, with a sigh. “I wonder if there are many such women in the world?” “As Mrs. Primmer?” “Yes.” “Thousands, unfortunately.” “I think a woman with a soul of ice is the most terrible thing earth can show.” “Malice incarnate, sharp of beak and red of claw.” “Do most people always seem bent on thinking the worst they can of their fellows?” “It is partly the result of sectarianism.” “What do you mean by sectarianism?” “The exclusive and narrow religious spirit of fools—the spirit that prompts a man to say, ‘You do not believe what I believe, therefore you are damned.’” “Are there, then, such absurd persons in the world?” “Hundreds, mostly Christian.” “Christian!” “By profession.” “But not in spirit.” “Hardly.” The sky had grown more overcast and a certain heavy torpor in the air gave promise of thunder. Masses of purple clouds stood piled in the west, cratered with burning pits of fire. A vast vault of ebony was rising towards the sun. Now and again a sudden gusty wind came breathing about the house, making the trees shudder as though they feared a storm. “How black the sky grows,” said the girl, joining Gabriel in the window-seat. “A storm threatens.” “And the wind prophesies.” Into the room a transient stream of sunlight poured. It burned in the girl’s hair and upon the flowers in her bosom, seeming to enhance the grim promise of the sky. “What will you do?” she asked. “Foul weather is nothing to me.” “You must stay here till the storm has passed.” “Perhaps,” said the man, looking at the clouds. The west grew lurid. A tense silence weighed upon the world, a silence so solemn that the very trees might have stood watching for some miraculous portent in the sky. The laurels and the grass shone with a vivid green in the mysterious light. The purple clouds in the west had taken fire and were fringed with flame. The wind rose. They heard it crying far away upon the hills, deep, hoarse, and distant. It gathered clamorous in the air, a great, solemn moan that seemed to surge from the east like the cavern cry of the dead. The trees stooped, swayed, tossed as in torture. Rain followed with the rattle of a cataract, a heavy mist shot through with the fiery spears of the setting sun. Lightning gleamed on the hills. The sky grew great with thunder. In the onrush of twilight the trees struggled in a tornado of wind and rain, while the house seemed to quake with the uproar of the storm. The two in the window-seat had drawn closer as they watched the sky. There was a long silence between them. Once Joan’s hand touched Gabriel’s. They drew apart suddenly with a quick glance into each other’s eyes. “I love such a storm,” said the girl. “It is grand. I have often thought that I should like to end my life at such an hour as this.” “More so than in a golden twilight?” “It is mere superstition on my part,” he added. “Yet I have had a kind of presentiment that life will end for me in tragedy.”