“It looks,” she broke off, “a little black in the west?  And—­was that lightning?”

“Only heat lightning.  And if it should storm,—­I have you here, in my arms, alone!” He turned and caught her to him, and his mouth crushed hers.  Her eyes closed, and her passion answered his, and all that he whispered.  Yet while he kissed her, her eyes opened and she looked furtively beyond him, toward that gathering blackness.

They lay there together in the starlit dark, for a long time, his head on her breast.  Sometimes she thrilled at his touch or low word, and sometimes she held his hand against her lips and kissed it—­which made him protest—­but suddenly he said, “By George!  Nelly, I believe we are going to have a shower!”

Instantly she was alert with fright, and sat up, and looked down into the valley, where the heat lightning, which had been winking along the line of the hills, suddenly sharpened into a flash. “Oh!” she said, and held her breath until, from very far off, came a faint grumble of thunder.  “Oh, Maurice!” she said, “it is horrible to be out here—­if it thunders!”

“We won’t be.  Well go into the cabin, and we’ll hear the rain on the roof, and the clash of the branches; and we’ll see the lightning through the chinks—­and I’ll have you!  Oh, Nelly, we shall be part of the storm!—­and nothing in God’s world can separate us.”

But this time she could not answer with any elemental impulse; she had no understanding of “being part of the storm”; instead, she watched the horizon.  “Oh!” she said, flinching.  “I don’t like it.  What shall we do?  Maurice, it is going to thunder!”

“I think I did feel a drop of rain,” he said,—­and held out his hand:  “Yes, Star, rain!  It’s begun!” He helped her to her feet, gathered up some of the cushions, and hurried her toward the little shelter.  She ran ahead of him, her very feet reluctant, lest the possible “snake” should curl in the darkness against her ankles; but once in the cabin, with a candle lighted, she could not see the lightning, so she was able to laugh at herself; when Maurice went out for the rest of the cushions, she charged him to hurry!  “The storm will be here in a minute!” she called to him.  And he called back: 

“I’ll only be a second!”

She stood in the doorway looking after him, and saw his figure outlined against the glimmer of their fire, which had already felt the spatter of the coming storm and was dying down; then, even as she looked, he seemed to plunge forward, and fall—­the thud of that fall was like a blow on her throat!  She gasped, “Maurice—­” And again, “Maurice! Have you hurt yourself?”

He did not rise.  A splash of rain struck her face; the mountain darkness was slit by a rapier of lightning, and there was a sudden violent illumination; she saw the tree and the cushions, and Maurice on the ground—­then blackness, and a tremendous crash of thunder.