Barbara rose and
dropped the note in Nevada's lap. "I'm awfully sorry," she said, "that
I knew. It isn't like Gilbert. There must be some mistake. Just consider
that I am ignorant of it, will you, dear? I must go up-stairs now, I
have such a headache. I'm sure I don't understand the note. Perhaps
Gilbert has been dining too well, and will explain. Good night!"

IV

Nevada tiptoed to the hall, and heard Barbara's door close upstairs.
The bronze clock in the study told the hour of twelve was fifteen
minutes away. She ran swiftly to the front door, and let herself out
into the snow-storm. Gilbert Warren's studio was six squares away.

By aerial ferry the white, silent forces of the storm attacked the city
from beyond the sullen East River. Already the snow lay a foot deep
on the pavements, the drifts heaping themselves like scaling-ladders
against the walls of the besieged town. The Avenue was as quiet as a
street in Pompeii. Cabs now and then skimmed past like white-winged
gulls over a moonlit ocean; and less frequent motor-cars--sustaining the
comparison--hissed through the foaming waves like submarine boats on
their jocund, perilous journeys.

Nevada plunged like a wind-driven storm-petrel on her way. She looked
up at the ragged sierras of cloud-capped buildings that rose above the
streets, shaded by the night lights and the congealed vapors to gray,
drab, ashen, lavender, dun, and cerulean tints. They were so like the
wintry mountains of her Western home that she felt a satisfaction such
as the hundred-thousand-dollar house had seldom brought her.

A policeman caused her to waver on a corner, just by his eye and weight.

"Hello, Mabel!" said he. "Kind of late for you to be out, ain't it?"

"I--I am just going to the drug store," said Nevada, hurrying past him.

The excuse serves as a passport for the most sophisticated. Does it
prove that woman never progresses, or that she sprang from Adam's rib,
full-fledged in intellect and wiles?

Turning eastward, the direct blast cut down Nevada's speed one-half. She
made zigzag tracks in the snow; but she was as tough as a pinon sapling,
and bowed to it as gracefully. Suddenly the studio-building loomed
before her, a familiar landmark, like a cliff above some well-remembered
canon. The haunt of business and its hostile neighbor, art, was darkened
and silent. The elevator stopped at ten.

Up eight flights of Stygian stairs Nevada climbed, and rapped firmly
at the