“Hear what?” asked the older woman soothingly, yet with a perceptible quaver in her voice, too. She was aware that the girl’s arm shook upon her own.
“Do you not hear it, too?” the girl whispered.
All listened without speaking. All watched her paling face. Something wonderful, yet half terrible, seemed in the air about them. There was a dull murmur, audible, faint, remote, its direction hard to tell. It had come suddenly from nowhere. They shivered. That strange racial thrill again passed into the group, unwelcome, unexplained. It was aboriginal; it belonged to the unconscious primitive mind, half childish, half terrifying.
“What do you hear?” her brother asked angrily—the irritable anger of nervous fear.
“When he came at me,” she answered very low, “I heard it first. I hear it now again. Listen! He’s coming.”
And at that minute, out of the dark mouth of the corridor, emerged two human figures, Plitzinger and Binovitch. Their game was over: they were going up to bed. They passed the open door of the card-room. But Binovitch was being half dragged, half restrained, for he was apparently attempting to run down the passage with flying, dancing leaps. He bounded. It was like a huge bird trying to rise for flight, while his companion kept him down by force upon the earth. As they entered the strip of light, Plitzinger changed his own position, placing himself swiftly between his companion and the group in the dark corner of the room. He hurried Binovitch along as though he sheltered him from view. They passed into the shadows down the passage. They disappeared. And every one looked significantly, questioningly, at his neighbour, though at first saying no word. It seemed that a curious disturbance of the air had followed them audibly.
Vera was the first to open her lips. “You heard it then,” she said breathlessly, her face whiter than the ceiling.
“Damn!” exclaimed her brother furiously. “It was wind against the outside walls—wind in the desert. The sand is driving.”
Vera looked at him. She shrank closer against the side of the older woman, whose arm was tight about her.
“It was not wind,” she whispered simply. She paused. All waited uneasily for the completion of her sentence. They stared into her face like peasants who expected a miracle.