indifferently as though it were a pageant arranged for her especial amusement.
"Silvia!" I cry while yet I am a little way off, "Silvia!" But she never stirs, never lifts her head, or unclasps her hands, or seems to know my voice, while all about her lie the wreck and ruin of the wild hurricane; and a few yards away, an oak struck with lightning stands bare and ghastly, stripped of its bark. I am stepping towards her, when—oh, my God!—the heavens above us open; a great light shines upon our faces, and, cleaving the air, there rushes towards us a great crimson ball of flame. I shut my eyes, and stand motionless: is not this death? and with a hiss and a swirl, and a burning breath that scorches my face, it smites the ground at my feet, and a great smoke belches forth, and hides everything from my eyes. Dimly I grope my way round to the other side; I am not killed, therefore Silvia must be———But there she sits looking just as she looked before the bolt fell.
"Alive and unharmed, thank God!" I cry, taking her cold hand in mine.
"If it had only killed me," she says, in a whisper, pointing her finger at the sullen flames; "if I had been only one step nearer———"
"Come away!" I say gently, and she does not resist, but lets me lead her away like a child. Her face is pale as the dead; her lovely eyes look straight before her, as though they beheld only one object; her hair hangs dank and heavy down her dripping back. An uncommonly nice couple we look as we reach the house, with pools of water running from our clothes; as beaten down and draggled as yonder poor flowers that lie with broken stalks in their churned-up beds.
Mrs. Fleming shrieks at her daughter's face—and, indeed, she might well have taken some grievous hurt out in the storm to judge by her looks—but the girl pulls herself wearily away.
