"There are certain phases of credulity that I would not disturb for the
world," he answered: "and who knows but you are right? What's more, your
faith is infectious; for, whatever reason might tell me, I should still
feel safer in a wild storm with the present company around me. Don't you
think it odd, Amy, that what we may term natural feeling gets the better
of the logic of the head? If that approaching storm should pass directly
over us, with thickly flying bolts, would you not feel safer here?"

"Yes."

Webb laughed in his low, peculiar way, and murmured, "What children an
accurate scientist would call us!"

"In respect to some things I never wish to grow up," she replied.

"I believe I can echo that wish. The outlook is growing fine, isn't it?"

The whole sky, which in the morning had smiled so brightly in undimmed
sunshine, was now black with clouds. These hung so low that the house
seemed the centre of a narrow and almost opaque horizon. The room soon
darkened with the gloom of twilight, and the faces of the inmates faded
into shadowy outlines. The mountains, half wrapped in vapor, loomed vast
and indefinite in the obscurity. Every moment the storm grew nearer, and
its centre was marked by an ominous blackness which the momentary flashes
left all the more intense. The young girl grew deeply absorbed in the
scene, and to Webb the strong, pure profile of her awed face, as the
increasingly vivid flashes revealed it, was far more attractive than the
landscape without, which was passing with swift alternations from ghastly
gloom to even more ghastly pallor. He looked at her; the rest looked at
the storm, the children gathering like chickens under the mother's wing.