...
Up-stairs she fumbled for the electric switch and missed it in the
darkness; a roomful of lightning showed her the button plainly on the
wall. But when the impenetrable black shut down, it again eluded her
fumbling fingers, so she slipped off her dress and petticoat and threw
herself weakly on the dry side of the half-drenched bed.
She shut her eyes. From down-stairs arose the babel of the drinkers,
punctured suddenly by a tinkling shiver of broken glass, and then
another, and by a soaring fragment of unsteady, irregular song....
She lay there for something over two hours--so she calculated afterward,
sheerly by piecing together the bits of time. She was conscious, even
aware, after a long while that the noise down-stairs had lessened, and
that the storm was moving off westward, throwing back lingering showers
of sound that fell, heavy and lifeless as her soul, into the soggy
fields. This was succeeded by a slow, reluctant scattering of the rain
and wind, until there was nothing outside her windows but a gentle
dripping and the swishing play of a cluster of wet vine against the
sill. She was in a state half-way between sleeping and waking, with
neither condition predominant .
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