He drew the Duchessa's letter from his pocket, and read it
again, and again approached it to his face, communing with that
ghost of a perfume.

"Heavens! how it makes one think of chiffons," he exclaimed.
"Thursday--Thursday--help me to live till Thursday!"




XVII


But he had n't to live till Thursday--he was destined to see
her not later than the next afternoon.

You know with what abruptness, with how brief a warning, storms
will spring from the blue, in that land of lakes and mountains.

It was three o'clock or thereabouts; and Peter was reading in
his garden; and the whole world lay basking in unmitigated
sunshine.

Then, all at once, somehow, you felt a change in things: the
sunshine seemed less brilliant, the shadows less solid, less
sharply outlined. Oh, it was very slight, very uncertain; you
had to look twice to assure yourself that it was n't a mere
fancy. It seemed as if never so thin a gauze had been drawn
over the face of the sun, just faintly bedimming, without
obscuring it. You could have ransacked the sky in vain to