One night she started up in terror from a deep sleep, and found King
standing over her, a lighted candle in his unsteady hand. The restless
flame kept the whole room dancing. Grotesque shadows leapt all about the
frightened woman as she sat in bed, one wrist gripped frantically by her
husband, who stared at her in a mood of smouldering horror. For a time
she heard only his breathing, here in the dead of night. But at length he
began muttering to her, his lips moving almost as though with the awful
revenue of nightmare still upon them. For a time she could not make out
any words, but after a little his tongue attained a thick coherency.
“Clouds!” he mumbled. “Clouds...! I can’t see anything else—horrible,
great black ones, and they roll up and fill the whole sky...!” His look
was awful.
Stella laid a hand on his in an effort to calm him, though her own heart
was on the dizzy edge of chaos.
The candlelight threw up before her a face dead white against a moving
background of shadows. Slowly she felt him relax. The grasp on her wrist
lessened, until finally his hands were moving about vaguely like moths
that cannot find the light. She looked down and saw dimly the dull red
marks he had left.
She drooped a little and felt all at once very weary. Her husband sat
on the edge of the bed, his back bent and his shoulders sagging heavily
toward his knees. All the old lordliness in him seemed burnt to cinders.
After a while he sighed a long sigh and slowly got to his feet. He had
put the candle down, and when he reached out for it, his hand was so
unsteady that he knocked it over, extinguishing the flame. She heard him
sigh again in the thick darkness of the room, and then grope his way out.