She never spoke of love in her letters, always ending demurely, "Yours sincerely, Puck." But now and then there was a small cross scratched impulsively underneath the name, and the letters that bore this token accompanied Merryon through his inferno whithersoever he went.
There came at last a night of terrible heat, when it seemed as if the world itself must burst into flames.

A heavy storm rolled up, roared overhead for a space like a caged monster, and sullenly rolled away, without a single drop of rain to ease the awful tension of waiting that possessed all things.
Merryon left the mess early, tramping back over the dusty road, convinced that the downpour for which they all yearned was at hand.
There was no moonlight that night, only a hot blackness, illumined now and then by a brilliant dart of lightning that shocked the senses and left behind a void indescribable, a darkness that could be felt.

There was something savage in the atmosphere, something primitive and passionate that seemed to force itself upon him even against his will.
His pulses were strung to a tropical intensity that made him aware of the man's blood in him, racing at fever heat through veins that felt swollen to bursting.
He entered his bungalow and flung off his clothes, took a plunge in a bath of tepid water, from which he emerged with a pricking sensation all over him that made the lightest touch a torture, and finally, keyed up to a pitch of sensitiveness that excited his own contempt, he pulled on some pyjamas and went out to his _charpoy_ on the veranda.
He dismissed the _punkah_ coolie, feeling his presence to be intolerable, and threw himself down with his coat flung open.

The oppression of the atmosphere was as though a red-hot lid were being forced down upon the tortured earth.

The blackness beyond the veranda was like a solid wall.