Tom was sitting on the balustrade of the balcony, and Maud in a low chair near him. She leant forward suddenly.
“Do you remember hearing the hum of London one night, and saying it was the finest thing in the world?”
“Yes, very well. It was at the Ramsdens’ dance. I shall hear it again soon.”
“Ah, you are going almost immediately, I suppose, now?”
As she spoke, the sky to the south became for a moment a sheet of blue fire, with an angry scribble running through the middle of it, and Miss Vanderbilt ejaculated in shrill dismay.
Tom turned as Maud spoke, and the lightning illuminated her face vividly.
The glimpse he had of her was absolutely momentary, for just so long as that dazzling streamer flickered across the sky. But in the darkness and pause that followed he still saw her face before him, phantom-like, as when we shut our eyes suddenly in a strong light we still preserve on the retina the image of what we were looking at.
The phantom face slid slowly into the surrounding darkness, but it was not till the answering peal had burst with a sound as of hundreds of marbles being poured on to a wooden floor overhead that Tom answered the question which her voice had translated, but her eyes had asked.
“Well, I hardly know,” he said. “When are you thinking of going home?”
In that moment, when the thunder was crackling overhead, a flood of shame and anger had come over Maud. Of her voice she had perfect command, as she knew, but that the lightning should have come at that moment and showed Tom her face was not calculable. But the absolute normalness of his tone reassured her.