TIME PASSES1'WELL, we must wait for the future to show,’ saidMr. Bankes, coming in from the terrace.

‘It’s almost too dark to see,’ said Andrew, comingup from the beach.

‘One can hardly tell which is the sea and which isthe land,’ said Prue.

‘Do we leave that light burning?’ said Lily as theytook their coats off indoors.

‘No,' said Prue, ‘not if everyone’s in.’

‘Andrew,’ she called back, ‘just put out the lightin the hall.’

One by one the lamps were all extinguished, exceptthat Mr. Carmichael, who liked to lie awake a littlereading Virgil, kept his candle burning rather longerthan the rest.2So with the lamps all put out, the moon sunk, and athin rain drumming on the roof a downpouring ofimmense darkness began. Nothing, it seemed, could sur-vive the flood, the profusion of darkness which, creep-ing in at keyholes and crevices, stole round windowblinds, came into bedrooms, swallowed up here a jugand basin, there a bowl of red and yellow dahlias,there the sharp edges and firm bulk of a chest ofdrawers. Not only was furniture confounded; therewas scarcely anything left of body or mind by whichone could say ‘This is he’ or ‘This is she.’ Sometimes147

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