I broke off, interrupted by a bright flash, like lightning, and a sharp tremor that shook the house.

'What – ?' I began. But I got no further.

The blast that blew in through the open window almost carried me off my feet. The noise came, too, in a great, turbulent, shattering breaker of sound, while the house seemed to rock about us.

The overwhelming crash was followed by a clatter and tinkle of things falling, and then by an utter silence.

Without any conscious purpose I ran past Angela, huddled in her chair, through the open french windows, out on to the lawn. The sky was full of leaves torn from the trees, and still fluttering down. I turned, and looked at the house. Two great swatches of creeper had been pulled from the wall, and hung raggedly down. Every window in the west front gaped blankly back at me, without a pane of glass left. I looked the other way again, and through and above the trees there was a white and red glare. I had not a moment's doubt what it meant...

Turning again I ran back to the sitting-room, but Angela had gone, and the chair was empty... I called to her, but there was no answer...

I found her at last, in Zellaby's study. The room was littered with broken glass. One curtain had been torn from its hangings and was draped half across the sofa. A part of the Zellaby family record had been swept from the mantel-shelf and now lay shattered in the hearth. Angela herself was sitting in Zellaby's working chair, lying forward across his desk, with her head on her bare arms. She did not move nor make any sound as I came in.

The opening of the door brought a draught through the empty window-frames. It caught a piece of paper lying on the desk beside her, slid it to the edge, and sent it fluttering to the floor.

I picked it up. A letter in Zellaby's pointed handwriting. I did not need to read it. The whole thing had been clear the moment I saw the red-white glow in the direction of The Grange, and recalled in the same instant the heavy cases which I had supposed to contain his recording-machine, and other gear. Nor was the letter mine to read, but as I put it back on the desk beside the motionless Angela, I caught sight of a few lines in the middle:

'... doctor will tell you, a matter of a few weeks, or months, at best. So no bitterness, my own love.

'As to this – well, we have lived so long in a garden that we have all but forgotten the commonplaces of survival. It was said: Si fueris Romae, Romani vivito more , and quite sensibly, too. But it is a more fundamental expression of the same sentiment to say: If you want to keep alive in the jungle, you must live as the jungle does...'