my feet are freezing to the
ground," she cried; and gathering up the cloak she fled away across the
snow, the dog leaping about her with challenging barks. For a moment
Archer stood watching, his gaze delighted by the flash of the red
meteor against the snow; then he started after her, and they met,
panting and laughing, at a wicket that led into the park.

She looked up at him and smiled. "I knew you'd come!"

"That shows you wanted me to," he returned, with a disproportionate joy
in their nonsense. The white glitter of the trees filled the air with
its own mysterious brightness, and as they walked on over the snow the
ground seemed to sing under their feet.

"Where did you come from?" Madame Olenska asked.

He told her, and added: "It was because I got your note."

After a pause she said, with a just perceptible chill in her voice:
"May asked you to take care of me."

"I didn't need any asking."

"You mean--I'm so evidently helpless and defenceless? What a poor
thing you must all think me! But women here seem not--seem never to
feel the need: any more than the blessed in heaven."

He lowered his voice to ask: "What sort of a need?"

"Ah, don't ask me! I don't speak your language," she retorted
petulantly.

The answer smote him like a blow, and he stood still in the path,
looking down at her.

"What did I come for, if I don't speak yours?"

"Oh, my friend--!" She laid her hand lightly on his arm, and he
pleaded earnestly: "Ellen--why won't you tell me what's happened?"

She shrugged again. "Does anything ever happen in heaven?"

He was silent, and they walked on a few yards without exchanging a
word. Finally she said: "I will tell you--but where, where, where?
One can't be alone for a minute in that great seminary of a house, with
all the doors wide open, and always a servant bringing tea, or a log
for the fire, or the newspaper! Is there nowhere in an American house
where one may be by one's self? You're so shy, and yet you're so
public. I always feel as if I were in the convent again--or on the
stage, before a dreadfully polite audience that never applauds."

"Ah, you don't like us!" Archer exclaimed.

They were walking past the house of the old Patroon, with its squat
walls and small square windows compactly grouped about a central
chimney. The shutters stood wide, and through one of the newly-washed
windows Archer caught the light of a fire.

"Why--the house is open!" he said.