The game was really a good one, and Mr. Pepper and Mr. Elliot were becoming more and more set upon the struggle.  Mrs. Thornbury, seeing that St. John did not wish to talk, resumed her knitting.

“Lightning again!” Mrs. Flushing suddenly exclaimed.  A yellow light flashed across the blue window, and for a second they saw the green trees outside.  She strode to the door, pushed it open, and stood half out in the open air.

But the light was only the reflection of the storm which was over.  The rain had ceased, the heavy clouds were blown away, and the air was thin and clear, although vapourish mists were being driven swiftly across the moon.  The sky was once more a deep and solemn blue, and the shape of the earth was visible at the bottom of the air, enormous, dark, and solid, rising into the tapering mass of the mountain, and pricked here and there on the slopes by the tiny lights of villas.  The driving air, the drone of the trees, and the flashing light which now and again spread a broad illumination over the earth filled Mrs. Flushing with exultation.  Her breasts rose and fell.

“Splendid!  Splendid!” she muttered to herself.  Then she turned back into the hall and exclaimed in a peremptory voice, “Come outside and see, Wilfrid; it’s wonderful.”

Some half-stirred; some rose; some dropped their balls of wool and began to stoop to look for them.

“To bed—­to bed,” said Miss Allan.

“It was the move with your Queen that gave it away, Pepper,” exclaimed Mr. Elliot triumphantly, sweeping the pieces together and standing up.  He had won the game.

“What?  Pepper beaten at last?  I congratulate you!” said Arthur Venning, who was wheeling old Mrs. Paley to bed.

All these voices sounded gratefully in St. John’s ears as he lay half-asleep, and yet vividly conscious of everything around him.  Across his eyes passed a procession of objects, black and indistinct, the figures of people picking up their books, their cards, their balls of wool, their work-baskets, and passing him one after another on their way to bed.