The gray background is there, but the real problem is that the Text in the Epub conversion is outside of the paragraph:
<p class="calibre2" style="margin:0pt; border:0pt; height:0pt">*</p>
recall. Sometimes, at night, she heard them
<p class="calibre2" style="margin:0pt; border:0pt; height:0pt">*</p>
* * "Ready ?"<p class="calibre2" style="margin:0pt; border:0pt; height:0pt">*</p>
This makes editing really difficult.
The CSS styles that came with the conversion:
.calibre {
background-color: #A0A0A0;
display: block;
font-size: 1em;
padding-left: 0;
padding-right: 0;
margin: 0 5pt
}
.calibre1 {
font-weight: bold
}
.calibre2 {
display: block
}
.calibre3 {
font-style: italic
}
.calibre4 {
color: gray;
display: block;
height: 2px;
margin: 0.5em auto;
border: currentColor inset 1px
}