CHAPTER XXX.

THROUGH THE SNOW.

Two days later Hermia went to a large dinner, and Quintard took her in. She was moody and absent. She felt nervous, she said, and he need not be surprised if he found her very cross. Quintard told her to be as cross as she liked. He had his reasons for encouraging her in her moods. After the dinner was over she wandered through the rooms like a restless ghost. Finally she turned abruptly to Quintard. “Take me home,” she said; “I shall stifle if I stay in this house any longer. It is like a hot-house.”

“But what will Mrs. Dykman say?”

“I do not care what she says. She is not ready to go, and I won’t stay any longer. I will go without saying anything to her about it.”

“Very well. There will be comment, but I will see if they have a telephone and order a cab.”

“I won’t go in a cab. I want to walk.”

“But it is snowing.”

“I like to walk in the snow.”

Quintard thought it best to let her have her way. Moreover, a walk through the snow with her would be a very pleasant thing. He hunted up a housemaid and borrowed a pair of high overshoes. Hermia had on a short gown; she pulled the fur-lined hood of her long wrap about her head, Quintard put on the overshoes, and they managed to get out of the house unnoticed. The snow was falling, but the wind lingered afar on the borders of the storm.

“You had better let me call a cab.”

“I will _not_ drive,” replied Hermia; and Quintard shrugged his shoulders and offered his arm.

The walk was not a long one under ordinary circumstances; the house at which the dinner had been given was in Gramercy Park; but, with a slippery pavement and snow-stars in one’s eyes, each block is a mile. Quintard had an umbrella, but Hermia would not let him raise it. She liked to throw back her head and watch the snow in its tumbling, scurrying, silent fall. It lay deep in the long, narrow street, and it blotted out the tall, stern houses with a merry, baffling curtain of wee, white storm-imps. Now and again a cab flashed its lantern like a will-o’-the-wisp.

Hermia made Quintard stop under one of the electric lamps. It poured its steady beams through the storm for a mile and more, and in it danced the sparkling crystals in infinite variety of form and motion. About the pathway pressed the soft, unlustrous army, jealous of their transformed comrades, like stars that sigh to spring from the crowded milky way. Down that luminous road hurried the tiny radiant shapes, like coming souls to the great city, hungry for life.

Hermia clung to Quintard, her eyes shining out of the dark.

“Summer and the country have nothing so beautiful as this,” she whispered. “I feel as if we were on a deserted planet, and of hateful modern life there was none. I cannot see a house.”

“I see several,” said Quintard.

Hermia gave a little exclamation of disgust, but struggled onward. “Sometimes I hate you,” she said. “You never respond to my moods.”

“Oh, yes, I do—to your real moods. You often think you are sentimental, when, should I take you up, you would find me a bore and change the subject. You will get sentimental enough some day, but you are not ready for it yet.”

“Yes? You still cling to that ridiculous idea that I shall some day fall in love, I suppose.”

“I do. And how you will go to pieces.”

“That is purest nonsense. I wish it were not.”

“Have you got that far? But we will not argue the matter. Your mood to-night, as I suggested before, is not a sentimental one. You are extremely cross. I don’t know but I like that better. It would be hard for me to be sentimental in the streets of New York.”

Hermia rather liked being bullied by him at times. But if she could only shake that effortless self-control!

They walked a block in silence. “Are you very susceptible to beauty?” she asked suddenly.

Quintard laughed. “I am afraid I am. Still, I will do myself the justice to say that it has no power to hold me if there is nothing else. Beauty by itself is a poor thing; combined with several other things—intellect, soul, passion—it becomes one of the sweetest and most powerful aids to communion.”

“Why do you think so much of passion?” she demanded. “You haven’t any yourself.”

They passed under a lamp at the moment, and a ray of light fell on Quintard’s face, to which Hermia had lifted her eyes. The color sprang to it, and his eyes flashed. He bent his head until she shrank under the strong, angry magnetism of his gaze. “It is time you opened your eyes,” he said harshly, “and learned to know one man from another. And it is time you began to realize what you have to expect.” He bent his face a little closer. “It will not frighten you, though,” he said. And then he raised his head and carefully piloted her across the street.

Hermia made no reply. She opened her lips as if her lungs needed more air. Something was humming in her head; she could not think. She looked up through a light-path into the dark, piling billows of the vaporous, storm-writhed ocean. Then she caught Quintard’s arm as if she were on an eminence and afraid of falling.

“Are you cold?” he asked, drawing her closer.

“Yes,” said Hermia. “I wish we were home. How thick the snow is! Things are in my eyes.”

Quintard stopped and brushed the little crystals off her lashes. Then they went on, slipping sometimes, but never falling. Quintard was very sure-footed. The snow covered them with a garment like soft white fur, the darkness deepened, and neither made further attempt at conversation. Quintard had all he could do to keep his bearings, and began to wish that he had not let Hermia have her way; but she trudged along beside him with a blind sort of confidence new to her.

After a time he gave an exclamation of relief. “We are within a couple of blocks of your house,” he said. “We shall soon be home. Be careful—the crossing is very slip——. Ah!”

She had stepped off the curbstone too quickly, her foot slipped, and she made a wild slide forward, dragging Quintard with her. He threw his arm around her, and caught his balance on the wing. In a second he was squarely planted on both feet, but he did not release Hermia. He wound his arms about her, pressing her closer, closer, his breath coming quickly. The ice-burdened storm might have been the hot blast of a furnace. He did not kiss her, his lips were frozen; but her hood had fallen back and he pressed his face into the fragrant gold of her hair.

He loosened his hold suddenly, and, drawing her arm through his, hurried through the street. They were at Hermia’s door in a few moments, and when the butler opened it she turned to him hesitatingly.

“You will come in and get warm, and ring for a cab?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, “I will go in for a moment.”

They went into the library, and Quintard lit all the burners. He touched a bell and told the butler to bring some sherry and call a cab.

When the sherry came he drank a glass with her, and entertained her until the cab arrived, with an account of a wild storm in which he had once found himself on the mountains of Colorado. When the bell rang she stood up and held out her hand with a smile.

“Good-luck to you,” she said. “I hope you will get home before morning.”

He took her hand, then dropped it and put both his own about her face, his wrists meeting under her chin. “Good-night,” he said softly. “Go to those sovereign domains of yours, where the castles are built of the clouds of sunset, and the sea thunders with longing and love and pain of desire. I have been with you there always; I always shall be;” and then he let his hands fall, and went quickly from the room.

Hermia waited until the front door had closed, and then she ran up to her room as if hobgoblins were in pursuit.

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