She had forgotten the danger that always beset him.

She had been so crazy, she had seen nothing, thought of nothing.
She had let him go into that, and into the storm, alone.

Who knew better than she how cruel they were?
She had seen the fire leap from the white blossom and heard the ball whistle, the ball they had meant for his heart, that good, great heart.

She had run to him the night before--why had she let him go into the unknown and the storm to-night?
But how could she have stopped him?
How could she have kept him, after what he had said?
She peered into the night through distorting tears.
The wind had gone down a little, but only a little, and the electrical flashes danced all around the horizon in magnificent display, sometimes far away, sometimes dazingly near, the darkness trebly deep between the intervals when the long sweep of flat lands lay in dazzling clearness, clean-cut in the washed air to the finest detail of stricken field and heaving woodland.

A staggering flame clove earth and sky; sheets of light came following it, and a frightful uproar shook the house and rattled the casements, but over the crash of thunder Minnie heard her friend's loud scream and saw her spring back from the window with both hands, palm outward, pressed to her face.