But he had n't to live till Thursday--he was destined to see

her not later than the next afternoon.

You know with what abruptness, with how brief a warning, storms

will spring from the blue, in that land of lakes and mountains.

It was three o'clock or thereabouts; and Peter was reading in

his garden; and the whole world lay basking in unmitigated

sunshine.

Then, all at once, somehow, you felt a change in things: the

sunshine seemed less brilliant, the shadows less solid, less

sharply outlined. Oh, it was very slight, very uncertain; you

had to look twice to assure yourself that it was n't a mere

fancy. It seemed as if never so thin a gauze had been drawn

over the face of the sun, just faintly bedimming, without

obscuring it. You could have ransacked the sky in vain to

discover the smallest shred of cloud.

At the same time, the air, which had been hot all day--hot,

but buoyant, but stimulant, but quick with oxygen--seemed to

become thick, sluggish, suffocating, seemed to yield up its

vital principle, and to fall a dead weight upon the earth.

And this effect was accompanied by a sudden silence--the usual

busy out-of-door country noises were suddenly suspended: the

locusts stopped their singing; not a bird twittered; not a

leaf rustled: the world held its breath. And if the river

went on babbling, babbling, that was a very part of the

silence--accented, underscored it.

Yet still you could not discern a rack of cloud anywhere in the

sky--still, for a minute or two . . . . Then, before you knew

how it had happened, the snow-summits of Monte Sfiorito were

completely lapped in cloud.

And now the cloud spread with astonishing rapidity--spread and

sank, cancelling the sun, shrouding the Gnisi to its waist,

curling in smoky wreaths among the battlements of the

Cornobastone, turning the lake from sapphire to sombre steel,

filling the entire valley with a strange mixture of darkness

and an uncanny pallid light. Overhead it hung like a vast

canopy of leaden-hued cotton-wool; at the west it had a fringe

of fiery crimson, beyond which a strip of clear sky on the

horizon diffused a dull metallic yellow, like tarnished brass.

Presently, in the distance, there was a low growl of thunder;

in a minute, a louder, angrier growl--as if the first were a

menace which had not been heeded. Then there was a violent

gush of wind--cold; smelling of the forests from which it came;

scattering everything before it, dust, dead leaves, the fallen

petals of flowers; making the trees writhe and labour, like

giants wrestling with invisible giants; making the short grass

shudder; corrugating the steel surface of the lake. Then two

or three big raindrops fell--and then, the deluge.




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