a breath of air
stirring. The evening meal was silent, too. An oppression, an
embarrassment, a sort of vague fear, seemed to make the two men and
the two women mute.

When the covers were removed, they sat long upon the terrace; only
speaking at long intervals. Night fell, a sultry night. Suddenly the
horizon was torn by an immense flash of lightning, which illumined
with a dazzling and wan light the four faces shrouded in darkness.
Then a far-off sound, heavy and feeble, like the rumbling of a
carriage upon a bridge, passed over the earth; and it seemed that
the heat of the atmosphere increased, that the air suddenly became
more oppressive, and the silence of the evening deeper.

Yvette rose. "I am going to bed," she said, "the storm makes me
ill."

And she offered her brow to the Marquise, gave her hand to the two
young men, and withdrew.

As her room was just above the terrace, the leaves of a great
chestnut-tree growing before the door soon gleamed with a green hue,
and Servigny kept his eyes fixed on this pale light in the foliage,
in which at times he thought he saw a shadow pass. But suddenly the
light went out. Madame Obardi gave a great sigh.

"My daughter has gone to bed," she said.

Servigny rose, saying: "I am going to do as much, Marquise, if you
will permit me." He kissed the hand she held out to him and
disappeared in turn.

She was left alone with Saval, in the night. In a moment she was
clasped in his arms. Then, although he tried to prevent her, she
kneeled before him murmuring: "I want to see you by the lightning
flashes."

But Yvette, her candle snuffed out, had returned to her balcony,
barefoot, gliding like a shadow, and she listened, consumed by an
unhappy and confused suspicion. She could not see, as she was above
them, on the roof of the terrace.

She heard nothing but a murmur of voices, and her heart beat so fast
that she could actually hear its throbbing. A window closed on the
floor above her. Servigny, then, must have just gone up to his room.
Her mother was alone with the other man.

A second flash of lightning, clearing the sky; lighted up for a
second all the landscape she knew so well, with a startling and
sinister gleam, and she saw the great river, with the color of
melted lead, as a river appears in dreams in fantastic scenes.

Just then a voice below her uttered the words: "I love you!" And she
heard nothing more. A strange shudder passed over her body, and her
sou