XV
On the afternoon before the departure of Crammon and Christian there was a violent thunder storm. The two men paced up and down in the upper corridor of the château and discussed their plans. In a pause between two peals of thunder Crammon listened and said: “What a queer noise. Did you hear it?”
“Yes,” Christian answered and they followed the direction of the sound.
At the end of the gallery was a mirrored hall, the doors of which were ajar. Crammon opened the door a little wider, peered in and laughed softly in his throat. Christian peered in too, above Crammon’s head, and joined in the laughter.
On the brilliantly polished floor of the room, which contained no furniture except a few couches and armchairs ranged along the walls, Letitia stood in little blue slippers and a pale blue gown and played at ball. Her face had an expression of ecstasy. The all but uninterrupted lightning that turned the mirrors into yellow flame gave her play a ghostliness of aspect.
Now she would toss the ball straight up, now she would throw it against the wall between the mirrors and catch it as it rebounded. At times she let it fall on the floor and clapped her hands or spread out her arms until it leaped up to be caught again. She turned and bent over and threw back her head, or advanced a step or whispered, always smiling and utterly absorbed. After the two had watched her for a while, Crammon drew Christian away, for the lightning made him nervous. He hated an electrical storm and had chosen to walk in the gallery to escape it. He now lit his short pipe and asked peevishly: “Do you understand the girl?”
Christian made no answer. Something lured him back to the threshold of the hall in which Letitia was playing her solitary game. But he remembered the toad on her white dress, and a strange aversion arose in his heart.