Mimi’s heart beat heavily.  Just before leaving the turret-chamber she had a shock which she could not shake off.  The lights of the room had momentarily revealed to her, as they passed out, Edgar’s face, concentrated as it was whenever he intended to use his mesmeric power.  Now the black eyebrows made a thick line across his face, under which his eyes shone and glittered ominously.  Mimi recognised the danger, and assumed the defiant attitude that had twice already served her so well.  She had a fear that the circumstances and the place were against her, and she wanted to be forearmed.

The sky was now somewhat lighter than it had been.  Either there was lightning afar off, whose reflections were carried by the rolling clouds, or else the gathered force, though not yet breaking into lightning, had an incipient power of light.  It seemed to affect both the man and the woman.  Edgar seemed altogether under its influence.  His spirits were boisterous, his mind exalted.  He was now at his worst; madder than he had been earlier in the night.

Mimi, trying to keep as far from him as possible, moved across the stone floor of the turret roof, and found a niche which concealed her.  It was not far from Lady Arabella’s place of hiding.

Edgar, left thus alone on the centre of the turret roof, found himself altogether his own master in a way which tended to increase his madness.  He knew that Mimi was close at hand, though he had lost sight of her.  He spoke loudly, and the sound of his own voice, though it was carried from him on the sweeping wind as fast as the words were spoken, seemed to exalt him still more.  Even the raging of the elements round him appeared to add to his exaltation.  To him it seemed that these manifestations were obedient to his own will.  He had reached the sublime of his madness; he was now in his own mind actually the Almighty, and whatever might happen would be the direct carrying out of his own commands.  As he could not see Mimi, nor fix whereabout she was, he shouted loudly: 

“Come to me!  You shall see now what you are despising, what you are warring against.  All that you see is mine—­the darkness as well as the light.  I tell you that I am greater than any other who is, or was, or shall be.  When the Master of Evil took Christ up on a high place and showed Him all the kingdoms of the earth, he was doing what he thought no other could do.  He was wrong—­he forgot Me.  I shall send you light, up to the very ramparts of heaven.  A light so great that it shall dissipate those black clouds that are rushing up and piling around us.  Look!  Look!  At the very touch of my hand that light springs into being and mounts up—­and up—­and up!”

He made his way whilst he was speaking to the corner of the turret whence flew the giant kite, and from which the runners ascended.  Mimi looked on, appalled and afraid to speak lest she should precipitate some calamity.  Within the niche Lady Arabella cowered in a paroxysm of fear.