Dan brought cold water in a basin, and a bundle of shabby table napkins, soft and white. With her right hand the girl wrapped the drapery of heavy silk more tightly around her body; through a mist of oil light she looked down at rumpled brown hair as Dan bent beside her. “Hold it up,” he directed. “That would be better. Here’s salve and everything. Your skin is—”

“The scratch is—deeper than I thought.”

“Yes.” Their voices died and left them, dumb and sodden creatures, marooned with no power of speech. Icy water began to drip from the girl’s fingers.

Suddenly, Bale lifted his head and leaped past her. He stood in front of the northwest window, gazing intently through the pane. She saw his fist clenching, squeezing the damp and pinkish cloth. The frenzied insect had ceased battering with all suddenness. On the clock shelf, a brass pendulum grated stubbornly back and forth behind painted glass.

“What is it?” the woman whispered. She stiffened with horrid, outlandish fear. “The window. Was—was there someone—?”

He closed the inner shutters. He came back, and took her hand again. “That bug, or whatever it was. A sound, you know.” He laughed, a harsh whinny. “But it occurred to me that I had better close the shutters.”

“Oh.” And then, “Yes. Someone might—”

He continued with his bandaging.

“There’s no need to wind it so thickly, Mr. Bale.”

“Most certainly. It must be kept clean and—protected.”

Thunder boomed and tumbled overhead. They listened. The volley pounded away into the north.

“Artillery must sound like that,” She drew a long breath.

Bale fastened the bandage with windings of white cotton thread.

She felt her lips twitch in a rubbery smile. “It was very kind of you to—do this.”

“It’s nothing.” He lifted ragged scraps of cloth from the table, put them down again. She could see the muscles of his throat stirring, relaxing, tightening once more.

The door swung open; the aperture framed a world grown suddenly violet, quaking violet light, very thin. A hoarse wind raced through shrubbery beyond the picket fence and enormous raindrops thudded like bursting eggs upon the porch roof.

“You can’t go, yet.”

“I must.”

Rain crashed down, a blinding sea. Purple light ruled the world again, then utter darkness. Dan pushed the door shut and turned the knob.

“Mr. Bale,” Irene cried. She could not face him; she looked down. Slowly she could feel her breasts toughening, paining her under the high-necked nightgown. She pressed her hands to her temples.