She hoard the jangling of the church hell; she heard also, suddenly, with a surprise that made her heart beat for a moment with furious leaps, a tapping on the window-pane.

Then directly after that she fancied that there came from her father's room above the thud of some sudden fall or collapse.

She listened.

The bell swallowed all other noise.

She thought that she had been mistaken, but the tapping at the window began again, now insistent; the church bell suddenly stopped and in the silence that followed one could hear the slight creak of some bough driven by the sea-wind against the wall.
The curtains were not drawn and where the curve of the hill fell away the sky was faintly yellow; some cold stars like points of ice pierced the higher blue; carelessly, as though with studied indifference, flakes of snow fell, turning grey against the lamp-lit windows, then vanishing utterly.