"I was not home." Joan was thinking hard and fast. Something was very wrong, but she could not make out what it was.
"Forgive me for breaking rules: I wanted to see you so that rules did not seem to count. Go on with your dance. You look like the spirit of twilight. Dance. Dance."
Joan grew more and more perplexed. The anger she felt was less than the sense of unreality about it all. Raymond was a stranger; he repelled her; in a way, shocked her.
"I'm through dancing," she said. "Since you are here, sit down. I will turn on the lights."
"Please don't. And you are angry. I'm awfully sorry, but it was this way: I was having dinner with some friends and suddenly I seemed to hear you calling to me. It gave me quite a shock. I thought you might be in danger, might be needing me."
Joan kept her eyes on Raymond's face. She was trying to overcome the growing aversion which alarmed her.
"No, I was not calling to you," she said. "I was bidding you good-bye—really, though I did not know it myself."
"Oh! come now!" Raymond bent forward over his clasped hands; "you are peeved! Not a bit like the little sport with that line in her hand."
"I—I wish you wouldn't talk like that." Joan frowned. "And I know it will sound rude—but I—wish you would go."
"You are—surly!" Raymond laughed again, and just then a deep, rumbling note of thunder followed a vivid flash.