IT was a sullen night in mid-August, following a breathless day and an angry sunset that had shed a copper-coloured glow above a bank of cloud. The great windows of the drawing-room of the Channel House were flung open wide, and on the terrace beneath the starless heaven sat the little group of intimates, which now included the placid lady of the little Kilburn house. Walter Herold, who had returned from Switzerland tanned and strong, told his adventures to Sir Oliver and Dr. Ransome, while John and Stella, a little way apart, listened idly. Lady Blount and Miss Lindon murmured irrelevancies concerning the curates of long ago and the present price of beef. They had many points at which the curves of their natures touched, such as mathematicians, with unique spasm of romance, call points of osculation.

But for the voices all was still. From below, at the base of the cliff, came the lazy lapping of the sea against the rocks. Outside the glow of light cast by the illuminated drawing-room the world was pitch black. The air grew more and more oppressive.

“I think there's going to be thunder,” said Lady Blount.

“I hope not,” said Miss Lindon. “I know John thinks it foolish, but I'm terribly afraid of thunder.”

“So does Sir Oliver; but I don't care. Whenever there's a thunder-storm, I go up to my room and put my head under the bedclothes until it 's over.”

“Now is n't that remarkable, my dear,” said Miss Lindon—“I do exactly the same! I draw down the blinds, and hide scissors away in a drawer, and throw a woollen shawl over the steel fender, and then I put my head under the blankets. My Aunt Margery, I remember, invariably used to go and sit in the coal-cellar. But she was a strong-minded woman, and would put her foot on a black beetle as soon as look at it. I hope I'm fond of most of God's creatures, but a black beetle frightens me out of my wits.”

“What do you think of thunder-storms, Stella?” John asked, knocking the ashes out of his pipe.

“I'm rather frightened,” she confessed. “Not because I think they 'll hurt me.” She paused and sighed. “I never could understand them.”

“What do you mean by understanding a thunderstorm?” he asked.

“I don't know,” she answered. “You either understand things or you don't.”

Herold broke in to spare her further explanation. “There was a splendid one the week before last in the mountains—a real Walpurgisnacht. It seemed as though hell had broken loose.”

He described it in his vivid way. The elderly ladies looked at the glimmer of white shirt-front and the glowing cigarette-end by which alone he was revealed, and wondered at the heroical, or, as it seemed in the unconfessed depths of their souls, the God-defying qualities of male humanity. A few resounding splashes fell from the sky. The party rose hurriedly.

“Gad! we 're in for it,” cried Sir Oliver. “Let us get indoors.”

A flash of lightning rent the southern sky, and a clap of thunder broke over the Channel, and the rain came down like a waterspout. In the drawing-room Lady Blount put her hand before her eyes.

“You must all forgive me. I can't stand it. I must go up-stairs. Besides, it 's late, very near bedtime, My dear Miss Lindon, shall we go?”

The two old ladies, after hasty good nights, retired to the protection of their respective bedclothes. A great wind arose and swept through the room, blowing over a vase of flowers on the piano. Dr. Ransome, who happened to be standing near, mopped up the water with his handkerchief. Herold sprang to the window and shut it. Stella was by his side. Another flash sped through the blackness, and the thunder followed. They drew near together and waited for the next.

Sir Oliver hospitably pushed John and the old doctor toward the drawing-room door. “There are drinks in the library. It 'll be cosier there, on the other side of the house, away from this confounded racket. Come along, Walter. Stella, darling, you had better go to bed. It 's the best place for little girls in a thunder-storm.”

She turned, the breadth of the drawing-room separating Walter Herold and herself from the others.

“I 'll stay up a little longer and look at it, dear Excellency,” she said, with a smile. “I 'll come into the library later and tell you all good night.”

At this announcement, and Stellamaris's announcements had ever been sovereign decrees, John and Dr. Ransome, standing by the open door, obeyed the courteous wave of Sir Oliver's hand. The old man waited for Herold, who advanced a pace or two.

“I suppose you 're dying for whisky and soda,” said Stella, resignedly.

He stopped short. “Not in the least. I would far rather look at this,”—he flung a hand toward the window,—“if you would let me.”

“Only for five minutes, Favourite, dear; then I 'll send you away.”

Sir Oliver went out, shutting the door behind him. Herold and Stellamaris were alone in the spacious room. There came another flash and the thunder peal, and the rain spattered hard on the stone terrace.

“Why should n't we sit down?” he asked, and drew a small settee to the window.

She stood, expectant of the lightning. It came and lit up a suddenly tempestuous sea. With her eyes straining at the blackness, she said in a low, voice:

“Turn out the lights. This is all that matters.” He went to the door, snapped the electric switches, and the darkness was so absolute that he waited for the next flash to see his way across the room. They sat down together side by side. A flash of vehement and reiterated radiance revealed a God's wrath of spindrift scattered from mountainous waves that tossed in the middle distance the three-masted skeleton of a ship, and blasted the chalk-cliffed promontory to the west into a leprous tongue. They watched in silence for a long, long time. Save for the lightning, pitch blackness enveloped them. The rain swished heavily against the windows, and the surf roared on the rocks below. After a livid revelation of elemental welter and the deafening crash of cataclysm, she clutched his arm. When the peal had rolled away into an angry rumble, he whispered:

“Are you frightened?”

“No,” she replied, also below her breath, “not frightened. It excites me, it makes me feel, it makes me think. I seem to be understanding things I never understood before. Don't let us speak.”

To remove impression of rebuke, her hand slid down his arm, found his hand, and held it. Neither spoke. After a while he scanned her face by the lightning. It was set, as though she saw a vision, her eyes gleaming, her lips parted. At the thunderclap her grasp involuntarily tightened. Again and again her face was startlingly visible. Herold's mind went back down the years. He had seen that rapt expression times without number when she lay by the window of her sea-chamber and looked out into the mysteries of sea and sky; and times without number she had held his hand while her spirit, as he had loved fantastically to believe, went forth to dance with her sisters of the foam or to walk secure through the gates of the sunset. And he had loved to believe, too, that his own spirit, in some blind, attendant way, though lagging far behind, followed hers over the borders of the Land That Never Was. Sensitive to her moods, he felt now a strange excitement. She had become once more the Stellamaris of the cloudless and mystical years. The sea that had rejected her had again claimed her for its own, and was delivering into her keeping mysteries such as it had withheld from her even then; for she had found no message in the war of elements, mysteries deep and magnificent. He returned her tense pressure, and followed her spirit out into the vastness.

The storm grew fiercer. Every few moments spasms of livid daylight rent the darkness and dazzlingly illuminated the eager faces of the pair, the window-jambs and transoms, the terrace, the howling waste beyond, the skeleton ship tossing grimly, the promontory, the pitch black of the sky; and the thunder burst in awful detonations over their heads. Unconsciously and instinctively Stellamaris had drawn nearer to him, and her arm rested against his. After a long time, in the stillness of the dark, he spoke like one in a dream:

“The terrible splendour of life, that is the secret—the terrible splendour.”

She awoke almost with a shock, and, turning round, shook him by the lapel of his coat.

“How did you know, Walter? How did you know?”

Her voice quavered; he felt that she was trembling. A flash showed her straining her eyes into his face. They waited for the thunderclap during a second of intensity.

“What?” he asked.

“Those words. Those very words had just come to me, the meaning of everything—The terrible splendour of life. How did you know?”

“It was our souls that were going together through the storm.”

She released him, and withdrew a little.

“Did you know all that I was thinking?”

“Or all that the sea was telling you?”

“Did you feel that, too?” she asked breathlessly.

“I think so,” he replied.

“It was strange,” she said. “I hardly knew that I was here. I seemed to be away in the midst of it all, but I don't think I lost consciousness. I had adventures—curious adventures.” She paused abruptly, then she continued: “They seemed to be definite then, but they are all a blur now. It was a kind of battle between man and evil forces, and I think I felt a voice speaking through it, and saying that the splendour of man would never be subdued; and the impression I 've got is, that I saw something, whether it was a shape or a scene I don't know, but something great and grand and fierce and heroic, and the voice told me it was life. The only thing I have clear is the words, 'the terrible splendour of life,' the words you plucked out of me.”

“It is the great secret,” he said.

“Yes.”

There was another silence. The storm began to pass gradually away. The lightning became rarer, and the intervals longer between flash and thunder.

“It is beginning to be clear,” she said at last. “All that has troubled me. All that you guessed I was feeling, and that I told you of only when you compelled me. You have been right. Once—do you remember?—you said that if I saw God through the beauty and the vanity of the world all would be well.”

“I ought to have told you to see Him through the pain of the world,” said Herold.

“You have told me that, in other words, ever since; and I was deaf.”

“Not I, dear,” said Herold.

“Yes, you. Now I understand.” She drew a deep breath. “Now, I understand. It's like an open book. That woman—Unity—wait,” she paused, and put her two hands to her head in the darkness. “I have a glimmer of a memory—it's so illusive. It seems that I saw Unity just now. I understand all that she was, all that she meant.” A flash showed the sea. “Yes, I was out there,” she cried excitedly, and pointed. “Just out there.” Darkness engulfed them. “I forget,” she faltered, “I forget.”

“But the sea has taken you back at last, Stellamaris,” said Herold.

She seized his hand and held it during the peal. Then she cried in a tone of sudden terror:

“Walter!”

“Yes?”

“What you said—your prophesy—the comfort of the sea—the deeper meaning—”

He leaped to his feet.

“Don't think anything more of it. They were just foolish words to comfort you. You and I seem to have been on the Edge of Beyond and looked over, and we 're not quite normal. We must get down now to practical things. I 'm just what I always was, dear, a fantastic person who rode with you into fairyland. I am still. Nothing more.”

“Are you quite sure?” suddenly asked a deep voice out of the blackness of the room.

Stella with a little cry of fright sprang to Herold for protection. For a second or two they were still. In their exaltation the question seemed to come from some vast depth of the abysm of time. Their hearts beat fast, and they clung together, listening, and there was not a sound. Then the lightning played its dancing daylight about the room, and they saw John Risca standing by the door. They sprang apart.

In another moment the room was flooded with electric light. The drawing-room, for all its beauty, looked mean and unimportant. The lights showed up glaringly an old Florentine tapestry over the chimney-piece. It seemed to have singularly little relation to life. It jarred impertinently.

“I came in to find Walter,” said John; “I did n't think Stella was still up. It's late. You did n't hear me. I'm sorry I inadvertently overheard.”

“There 's nothing, my dear John, that you could not have heard,” said Herold.

John came forward in his lumbering way.

“I know that, Walter.”

For a minute or two no one spoke. The three stood stock-still, their hearts thumping. Outside, the rain fell pitilessly on the flags of the terrace, and the waning storm flashed and growled. John's burning eyes looked at Herold beneath heavy, knitted brows. At last he said:

“You love Stella. You have loved her always. You never told me.”

“That is not so,” said Herold. “You have found us in a foolishly false position. A thunder-storm is an emotional piece of business. My old intimacy with Stella has its privileges. I 'll leave you. Stella will speak for herself.”

John stretched out a detaining arm. “No, my friend; stay. We three must have a talk together. It was bound to come sooner or later. Let it be now.” He spoke quietly, with dignity and authority. “There is nothing for us to talk about,” said Herold,—Stellamaris stood clutching the back of an armchair, and looking from one man to the other,—“the words you overheard ought to tell you that. And in answer to your question, I can say that I am quite sure.”

“You lie,” said John, quietly. “You lie out of the loyalty of your heart—” he raised his great hand to check the other's outburst—“God Almighty in Heaven knows I'm not accusing you. If ever man had deep and devoted and unselfish love from another, I've had it from you. And I have it still. It's a matter not of reproach, but of reparation.”

“Don't you think,” said Herold, “we might continue this extraordinary conversation in the library—by ourselves?”

“No,” said John in the obstinate tone that Herold had known for many years. “You and I are two men, and Stella is a woman, and a hell-mess just like that—” he pointed to the tempest—“has upset our lives. It's time to put them to rights again.”

“I don't know what you 're talking about,” said Herold. “It 's a pity you have chosen to-night. Things are a bit abnormal. Let us go to bed, and talk to-morrow, if you like, in the light of common sense.”

John folded his arms. “I'm going to talk to-night. I want you calmly to consider the position.”

“I do,” said Herold. “Stop,”—-as John was about, to interrupt,—“let me speak.”

“Yes,” said Stella, breaking silence for the first time; “let Walter speak.”

But she stood apart, fascinated by this strange duel, as her primitive ancestress might have done when two males fought for her with flint-headed axes.

“What I feel as regards Stella is neither here nor there. I 've never told her that I loved her. I 've never told you. Both you and she have told me that you love each other. That was enough for me. I joined with Unity in seeking to remove the obstacle in the path of your happiness. If Unity had not forestalled me, I—well, God knows what I should have done! I left you asleep that evening, and went, half crazy, to the flat, and there I found what I found. But, anyhow, Unity committed murder and suicide to set the two of you free. If you want strong, blatant words, there you have them. A girl, one of God's chosen, has laid down her life for the two of you.” He stood between them and threw up his hands. “Take each other. It is a sacrament.”

Stella, her arms still on the back of the chair, hung her head and stared downward. John cast a quick glance at her and then, a thing which he rarely did, drew his great frame up to its full height and challenged his friend.

“If you don't love her, she loves you. I know.”

Herold said:

“You two belong to each other.”

“Then Stella must decide,” said John.

She threw out a flutter of delicate fingers and covered her face. “No, no!” she gasped.

The lightning flickered mildly in the well-lit room, and the eventual thunder reverberated in distant anger.

John again came close to Herold. “This may be an extraordinary conversation, but it has to be. If Stella loved me, do you think she would stand like that?”

Stella dropped to her knees, her face and arms huddled against the chair.

“My dear old man, I 've learned many things of late. I can't tell you exactly. I'm not good at that sort of thing. But Unity has been too big for me.”

Stella raised a white face.

“What do you mean? Say exactly what you mean.”

“I mean—oh, God knows what I mean.” He strode blindly across the room, returned, and faced the two, still near together. “Can't you understand?” he cried, with a wide gesture. “I'm infinitesimal sand beneath that child's feet. I'm a blind mole in comparison with her transcendent vision. I 'm in the dust. Oh, God!” He turned away.

Stella rose, and, clasping hands to her bosom, went to him.

“Belovedest, for Christ's sake, what is the end of all this?”

He halted and took her hands.

“Not shadows, not lies. Once I thought—indeed, I knew—you loved me. That was when you were an ignorant child. You loved some one you thought was me. Now your eyes are opened. You have passed through flames. Knowledge has come to you. You see me as I am, and your love has gone. I know, too, what I am. Unity has taught me. You can't—you don't love me, Stella. That I know. I've known it ever since that day when we put her into her grave.”

Herold came between them imploringly. “My dear man—my dear fellow—what is the use of this wild talk? You two love each other. Unity gave her life for the two of you. If you two don't come together, it 's all overwhelming, blasting irony. I could n't believe in God after it. It would be hellishly cynical. Stella, in God's name, tell him that you are bound by Unity's sacrifice—that you love him and will marry him and make his life happy!”

Stella, very pale, looked at John. “If you want me, I will marry you,” she said in a clear voice.

John waved her aside. “I will not take you, my dear,” said he.

Spurned sex winced involuntarily.

“If you have stopped caring for me—”

“I stopped caring? I? Merciful God, I've never loved you so much. But you love a better man. What's the good of saying the same things over and over again? But I 'll tell you this, both of you, that if Unity had not given her life, and if I had been free, I should have fought for you and had you despite everything. That 's my accursed nature. But Unity has not died in vain, and it's because of that child's death, the beauty and heroism of it, that I'm able to stand here and tear my heart out and throw it away. Don't make any mistake,”—he turned fiercely on Herold,—“it's not I who am giving her up. It's Unity.”

“Very well,” said Herold. “Let us put it at that. It's your point of view. You also force me to speak. It would be grotesque to keep silence any longer. Yes, I do love her. She is the beginning and end of life to me. If she had lain on her back all her days, I should never have married another woman. There! You have it now.”

The two men's eyes held each other for a space. Stellamaris looked at the pair with a fearful admiration. They were men. Herold she had divined and known long ago; this, on his part, was only the supreme fulfilment of promise. But John Risca, who had passed through the illusion and disillusion of her soul, stood before her in new strength, a great and moving figure.

At last John drew a deep breath, turned to Stellamaris very gently, and smiled.

“And you?”

The smile sent swift pain through her heart. She made a step or two, and fell sobbing on his breast.

“O Belovedest, I am sorry! You have guessed right. Forgive me!”

He caressed the bowed head tenderly for an instant, then releasing himself, he clapped his hand on Herold's shoulder and shook it with rough affection.

“I 'm going to bed,” said he. He moved to the door. There he paused to nod a good night; but at sight of them both looking sadly at him he walked back a couple of paces.

“Don't worry about me. I'm at peace with myself for the first time for years. There 's lots of happiness in the world left.” He smiled again. “Enough for the three of us—and for Unity.”

He left them, and went to bed in the room which Stellamaris had furnished for him long ago, and fell into the sleep of the man who has found rest at last in the calm and certain knowledge of spiritual things. Unity had not died in vain. And Stellamaris, sitting once more by Herold's side in the wide bay of the window, and talking with him in a hushed voice of the wondrous things that had come to pass, knew that John Risca had spoken a great truth. It had been God's will that so should the terrible splendour of the world be made manifest.

Herold asked for the million-billionth time in the history of mankind:

“When did you first find that you loved me?”

She replied, perhaps more truly than most maidens:

“There was never a time when I did n't love you. I mean—I don't quite know what I mean,” she said confusedly. “You see, I 've lived a strange life, dear,” she went on. “You seem to have been a part of me ever since I can remember what is worth remembering. You have always understood things that went on inside me almost before I could tell them to you. I always wanted you to explain foolishness that I could n't speak of to any one else.”

“That's very beautiful,” Herold interrupted, “but love is a different matter. When did the real love come to you?”

“I think it was that morning in the garden when you almost whipped me,” said Stella. She started an inch or two away from him. “And I 'm sure you knew it,” she said.

And he remembered, as he had often remembered in his great struggle, her eyes, turning from agates to diamonds and her words, “Do you love me like that?”

“Heaven knows, Stellamaris dear; I did not mean to betray myself.”

She laughed the enigmatic laugh of a woman's contentment, and Herold was too wise to ask why.

They spoke of deepest things. “There is something I must tell you,” said he, “which up to now I have had to keep secret, and it is right that you should know.”

And he told Her the story of Unity and himself—the revolver, their talk of the evil woman, their parting words, his crazed adventure through the sunny streets.

She listened, her body leaning forward, her hands clasped on her knee. When he had finished, she sat without change of attitude.

“You did that so that another man could marry the woman you loved. Unity did that so that the man she loved could marry another woman. John came in to-night to sacrifice himself and give us both happiness. The three of you have done terrible and splendid things. I am the only one of us four who has done nothing.”

Herold rose, took a nervous pace or two. What she said needed more than a lover's sophistical reassurance. He could speak a thousand words of comfort; but he knew that her soul required a supreme answer, a clue to the dark labyrinth through which she had worked. What could he say? He looked through the window, and suddenly saw that which to him was an inspiration. He threw the folding-doors wide. It had stopped raining long ago, though neither had noticed.

“Come out on the terrace,” said he.

She followed him into the gusty air. The sea still roared resentfully at the late disturbance of its quiet. The southwest wind that had brought up the storm had driven the great rack of black cloud above the horizon, and there below the rack was a band of dark but cloudless sky, and in it one star hung serene. Herold pointed to it.

“What have you done, dear?” His voice broke in a catch of exultation, and his usually nimble wit failed to grasp the lunatic falsity of the analogy. “You have done what that has done—come through the storm pure and steadfast.”

“Not I, dear,” she said, “but my faith in the God we breathe.”

“No; you yourself.” He put his arm around her, and all his love spoke. “You. The living mystery of beauty that is you.” He whispered into her lips. “You—Stellamaris—Star of the Sea.”

THE END