es it, I believe.'

'The worst, I am afraid, may be still to come,' Mrs. Venables murmured.
'They say we may expect a terrible night. There are sinister omens....'

'Oh, it is a rotten place,' said Miranda, disgusted.

It grew to be so, more and more, through the day. Tommy met Betty for
lunch, then continued his impression-seeking, coated from head to foot
in black dust. They arranged to be in for supper at eight. Betty was not
surprised when Tommy failed to appear; there was so much of increasing
interest going on. Instead, Gina Lunelli came in, seeking cheerful
society because she was horribly afraid, with the abandoned physical
terror of large, full-blooded people. The Crevequers always cheered one,
made one laugh; she sought them, therefore, and found Betty alone,
waiting for supper.

Supper restored Gina a little; she became more cheerful, though still
observing that there seemed every probability of the world coming to an
end in the course of the night.

'The way it blazes--Madre Dio! And the ashes that choke one! And this
horrible storm! And Tommy--he's out in it!'

'Oh, Tommy's all right.'

Gina shrugged her broad shoulders.

'What with the storm, and the ashes they're shovelling in great heaps
off the roofs, and the wild people there are about, and no one to keep
order, and the convulsion of the earth.... But who knows? We must hope
for the best, and the saints are good.'

Later on in the evening there actually was a slight convulsion of the
earth. It shook the furniture and made a rattling, and caused Gina to
have a fit of hysteria, and sent her running out into the street,
notwithstanding the storm, averring that she would on the whole prefer
to be slain by lightning than by a collapsing roof.

Betty curled herself up in her chair and listened to the voices of the
night. It was about eleven o'clock then--a black, wild night, full of
the storm. The earth growled back strange mutterings in answer to the
rumblings of the sky. It was as if all hell was loose, and playing about
Naples that night. The thunder-peals and the answering earth-growls grew
in reverberance, in sullen rage.

Betty wanted Tommy.

There might be many reasons, but there seemed on the face of it to be no
reason, why he should not have come in. He had probably been asked to
supper by some one. But he had said, for certain, that he would come
home.... Betty did not think that Tommy had lately been in a mood to
seek sociable eveni