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264 we must talk about it. It can't go on like this. I can bear it."

"I can't bear it," said he.

Swiftly she drew his head down to hers.

"We must go in," she said.

Edgar was sitting in a chair close to the window as they stepped into the light. For one second, as a farewell to that long silence of love, they looked at each other. Then Lucia saw him, saw, too, that he was looking at them, and her face utterly changed, became like herself again. But what he had seen was the face of a woman he felt he had never seen before.

"Ah, it is hot—hot!" she said. "Charlie and I are exhausted. The sky has come down to the earth. Something is going to burst; I feel it must burst!"

Suddenly the huge still blackness outside was resolved into a great sheet of flame. For a moment flower-beds, trees, grass, the lake, the great downs, were presented with more than the vividness of noonday. Simultaneously the thunder cracked and bellowed with an appalling reverberation.

For a moment Lucia held her hands before her eyes, dazzled and blinded by that hellish glare; then she ran into the drawing-room.

"Ah, I am frightened!" she cried. "It has been so still, so silent!"