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 rise and fill the stinking cellars of the houses. Those few families who lived in tents must already be soaked with the cold downpour. The streets were deserted, and the shops and houses black and dark. Once he caught the distant glint of light on the wet black slicker of a policeman. Save for this, he seemed to be alone in a town of the dead.

From a long way off he saw the light in the church study, and the sight of it warmed him with quick certainty that Naomi must still be there. Some urgent thing, he told himself, had arisen at choir practice. He ran down the street and through the churchyard, and at the door of the study he knocked violently. No one answered. The place was empty. He opened the door. A drawer of the cabinet stood half-open with a pile of music thrust into it carelessly. A drawer of the desk was open and empty. The gas still flickered in the corner. Passing through the study, he went into the church itself. It was dark, save for a dim flare that made the outlines of the windows silhouettes of gray set in black. The empty church frightened him. He shouted, "Naomi! Naomi!" and, waiting, heard only an echo that grew fainter and fainter. . . "Naomi! . . . Naomi! . . . Naomi! . . ." until it died away into cold stillness. Again he shouted, and again the mocking, receding echo answered him. . . . "Naomi! . . . Naomi! . . . Naomi! . . ." His own voice, trembling with terror, came back to him out of the darkness: "Naomi! . . . Naomi! . . . Naomi!"

He thought, "She's not here, but she might be at the parsonage. In any case, Reverend Castor will know something." And then, "But why did he go