menace which had not been heeded. Then there was a violent
gush of wind--cold; smelling of the forests from which it came;
scattering everything before it, dust, dead leaves, the fallen
petals of flowers; making the trees writhe and labour, like
giants wrestling with invisible giants; making the short grass
shudder; corrugating the steel surface of the lake. Then two
or three big raindrops fell--and then, the deluge.

Peter climbed up to his observatory--a square four-windowed
turret, at the top of the house--thence to watch the storm and
exult in it. Really it was splendid--to see, to hear; its
immense wild force, its immense reckless fury. Rain had never
rained so hard, he thought. Already, the lake, the mountain
slopes, the villas and vineyards westward, were totally blotted
out, hidden behind walls and walls of water; and even the
neighbouring lawns of Ventirose, the confines of his own
garden, were barely distinguishable, blurred as by a fog. The
big drops pelted the river like bullets, sending up splashes
bigger than themselves. And the tiled roof just above his head
resounded with a continual loud crepitation, as if a multitude
of iron-shod elves were dancing on it. The thunder crashed,
roared, reverberated, like the toppling of great edifices. The
lightning tore through the black cloud-canopy in long blinding
zig-zags. The wind moaned, howled, hooted--and the square
chamber where Peter stood shook and rattled under its
buffetings, and was full of the chill and the smell of it.
Really the whole thing was splendid.

His garden-paths ran with muddy brooklets; the high-road beyond
his hedge was transformed to a shallow torrent . . . . And,