And next moment she was planning the camping details, the men,
the ponies, with a practical zest that seemed to relegate the
occult to the absurd. Yet the very next day came a wonderful
moment.

The sun was just setting and, as it were, suddenly the purple
glooms banked up heavy with thunder. The sky was black with fury,
the earth passive with dread. I never saw such lightning - it was
continuous and tore in zigzag flashes down the mountains like
rents in the substance of the world's fabric. And the thunder
roared up in the mountain gorges with shattering echoes. Then
fell the rain, and the whole lake seemed to rise to meet it, and
the noise was like the rattle of musketry. We were standing by
the cabin window and she suddenly caught my hand, and I saw in a
light of their own two dancing figures on the tormented water
before us. Wild in the tumult, embodied delight, with arms tossed
violently above their heads, and feet flung up behind them,
skimming the waves like seagulls, they passed. Their sex I could
not tell - I think they had none, but were bubble emanations of
the rejoicing rush of the rain and the wild retreating laughter
of the thunder. I saw the fierce aerial faces and their inhuman
glee as they fled by, and she dropped my hand and they were gone.
Slowly the storm lessened, and in the west the clouds tore
raggedly asunder and a flood of livid yellow light poured down
upon the lake - an awful light that struck it into an abyss of
fire. Then, as if at a word of command, two glorious rainbows
sprang across the water with the mountains for their piers, each
with its proper colours chorded. They made a Bridge of Dread that
stood out radiant against the background of storm - the Twilight