The Place of the Lion by Charles Williams — Read

Damaris Tighe had had a bad night. The thunder had kept her awake, and she particularly needed sleep just now, in order to be quite fresh every day to cope with her thesis about _Pythagorean Influences on Abelard_. There were moments when she almost wished she had not picked anyone quite so remote as Abelard; only all the later schoolmen had been done to death by other writers, whereas Abelard seemed--so far as theses on Pythagorean Influences went--to have been left to her to do to death. But this tracing of thought between the two humanistic thinkers was a business for which she needed a particularly clear head. She had so far a list of eighteen close identifications, twenty-three cases of probable traditional views, and eighty-five less distinct relationships. And then there had been that letter to the _Journal of Classical Studies_ challenging a word in a new translation of Aristotle. She had been a little nervous about sending it. After all, she was more concerned about her doctorate of philosophy, for which the thesis was meant, than for the accuracy of the translation of Aristotle, and it would be very annoying if she made enemies--not, of course, the translator--but. well, anyone. And on top of all that had come that crash of thunder, every now and then echoing all through the black sky. No lightning, no rain, only--at long intervals, just whenever she was going off to sleep at last--thunder, and again thunder. She had been unable to work all the morning. It looked, now, as if her afternoon would be equally wasted.

"We hear," Mrs. Rockbotham said, "that he's quite comatose."