sphere was split open and Mila with Karospina vanished in the nocturnal
gulf.

Gerald, stunned by the catastrophe, threw himself down, expecting a
mighty explosion; the ebon darkness was appalling after the
scintillating rain of fire. But the liberated gas in the guise of an
elongated cloud had rushed seaward, and there gathering density and
strength, assumed the shape of a terrific funnel, an inky spiral, its
gyrating sides streaked with intermittent flashes. Its volcanic roaring
and rapid return to land was a signal for vain flight--the miserable
lover knew it to be the flamboyant ether of the pyromaniac transformed
into a trumpeting tornado. And he hoped that it would not spare him, as
this phantasm twirled and ululated in the heavens, a grim portent of the
iron wrath of the Almighty. In a twinkling it had passed him, high in
the dome of heaven, only to erase in a fabulous blast the moaning
multitude. And prone upon the strand between the stormy waters and the
field of muddy dead, Gerald Shannon prayed for a second cataclysm which
might bring oblivion to him alone.




VI

A MOCK SUN

Where are the sins of yester-year?


I