sensitive lips--curved in a smile that made Avery
avert her eyes with a sudden hot pang. He released Jeanie, and turned
away to the door.

"I'll see what I can do," he said. "You had better go into the
garden--you and Avery."

They went, though Jeanie looked as if she would have preferred to
accompany him to the music-room. It was little cooler on the terrace than
in the house. The heat brooded over all, dense, black, threatening.

"I hope it will rain soon," said Jeanie, drawing her chair close
to Avery's.

"There will be a storm when it does," Avery said.

"I like storms, don't you?" said Jeanie.

Avery shook her head. "No, dear."

She was listening in tense expectancy, waiting with a dread that was
almost insupportable for the music that Piers was about to make. They
were close to the open French window of the music-room, but there was no
light within. Piers was evidently sitting there silent in the darkness.
Her pulses were beating violently. Why did he sit so still? Why was
there no sound?

A flash of lightning quivered above the tree-tops and was gone. Jeanie
drew in her breath, saying no word. Avery shrank and closed her eyes. She
could hear her heart beating audibly, like the throbbing of a distant
drum. The suspense was terrible.

There came from far away the growl and mutter of the rising storm. The
leaves of the garden began to tremble. And then, ere that roll of
distant thunder had died away, another sound came through the
darkness--a sound that was almost terrifying in its suddenness, and the
grand piano began to speak.

What music it uttered, Avery knew not. It was such as she had never heard
before. It was unearthly, it was devilish, a fiendish chorus that was
like the laughter of a thousand demons--a pandemonium that shocked her
unutterably.

Just as once he had drawn aside for her the veil that shrouded the Holy
Place, so now he rent open the gates of hell and showed her the horrors
of the prison-house, forcing her to look upon them, forcing her to
understand.

She clung to Jeanie's hand in nightmare fear. The anguish of the
revelation was almost unendurable. She felt as if he had caught her
quivering soul and was thrusting it into an inferno from which it could
never rise again. Through and above that awful laughter she seemed to
hear the crackling of the flames, to feel the blistering heat that had
consumed so many, to see the red glare of the furnace gaping wide
before her.

She c