They leaned together on the window-sill, silenced by the white and shining beauty that had turned the pleasant garden into a place of magic and enchantment.  The corners of Janet’s mouth lifted suddenly.  How absurd people were!  The fat Hodges boy and his motorcycle!  Did they all regard her as an amiable lunatic—­even little, lovely, friendly Rosemary, wavering sleepily at her side?  It really was maddening.  But she felt, amazingly enough, suddenly quiet and joyous and indifferent—­and passionately glad that the wanderer from the skies had won safely through and was speeding home.  Home!  Oh, it was a crying pity that it need ever land—­anything so fleet and strong and sure should fly forever!  But if they must rest, those beating wings—­the old R.F.C. toast went singing through her head and she flung it out into the moonlight, smiling—­“Happy landings!  Happy landings, you!”

The next day was the one that brought to White Orchards what was to be known for many moons as “the Big Storm.”  It had been gathering all afternoon, and by evening the heat had grown appalling and incredible, even to Janet’s American and exigent standards.  The smouldering copper sky looked as though it had caught fire from the world and would burn forever; there was not so much as a whisper of air to break the stillness—­it seemed as though the whole tortured earth were holding its breath, waiting to see what would happen next.  Every one had struggled through the day assuring one another that when evening came it would be all right—­dangling the alluring thought of the cool darkness before each other’s hot and weary eyes; but the night proved even more outrageous than the day.  To the little group seated on the terrace, dispiritedly playing with their coffee, it seemed almost a personal affront.  The darkness closed in on them, smothering, heavy, intolerable; they could feel its weight, as though it were some hateful and tangible thing.

“Like—­like black cotton wool,” explained Rosemary, stirred to unwonted resentment.  She had spent the day curled up in the largest Indian chair on the terrace, round-eyed with fatigue and incredulity.

“I honestly think that we must be dreaming,” she murmured to her feverish audience; “I do, honestly.  Why, it’s only May, and we never, never—­there was that day in August about five years ago that was almost as bad, though.  D’you remember, Mummy?”

“It’s hardly the kind of thing that one is likely to forget, love.  Do you think that it is necessary for us to talk?  I feel somehow that I could bear it much more easily if we kept quite quiet.”