in, she would go to bed angry
with me. And when Lisa is angry she generally has a heart attack and is
ill next day. "Di, are you there?" she called again.

Without answering, I went to the door and unlocked it. She came in with
a rush. "I feel perfectly wild, as if I must do something desperate,"
she said.

So did I, but I didn't mean to let her know that.

"I'm going out," she went on. "If I don't, I shall have a fit."

"Out!" I repeated. "You can't. It's midnight."

"Can't? There's no such word for me as 'can't,' when I want to do
anything, and you ought to know that," said she. "It's only being ill
that ever stops me, and I'm not ill to-night. I feel as if electricity
were flowing all through me, making my nerves jump, and I believe you
feel exactly the same way. Your eyes are as big as half-crowns, and as
black as ink."

"I _am_ a little nervous," I confessed. And I couldn't help thinking it
odd that Lisa and I should both be feeling that electrical sensation at
the same time. "Perhaps it's in the air. Maybe there's going to be a
thunder-storm. There are clouds over the stars, and a wind coming up."

"Maybe it's partly that, maybe not," said she. "But there's one thing
I'm sure of. _Something's going to happen._"

"Do you feel that, too?" I broke out before I'd stopped to think. Then I
wished I hadn't. But it was too late to wish. Lisa caught me up quickly.

"Ah, I _knew_ you did!" she cried, looking as eerie and almost as
haggard as a witch. "Something _is_ going to happen. Come. Go with me
and be in it, whatever it is."

"No," I said. "And you mustn't go either." But she was weird. She seemed
to lure me, like a strange little siren, with all a siren's witchery,
though without her beauty. My voice sounded undecided, and I knew it.

"Of course I'm not asking you to wander with me in the night, hand in
hand through the streets of Paris, like the Two Orphans," said Lisa.
"I'm going to have a closed carriage--a motor-brougham, one belonging to
the hotel, so it's quite safe. It's ordered already, and I shall first
drive and drive until my nerves stop jerking and my head throbbing. If
you won't drive with me I shall drive alone. But there'll be no harm in
it, either way. I didn't know you were so conventional as to think there
could be. Where's your brave, independent American spirit?"

"I'm not conventional," I said.

"Yes, you are. Living in England has spoiled you. You're afraid of
things you never use