e problem, and now and then he let it go from sheer weariness
of heart.

In the face of the window of the drawing-room where Bulstrode sat on
this afternoon of an especial winter's day the storm cast wreaths of
snow that clung and froze, or dropped like feathers down against the
sill. The gentleman had his predilections even in New York, and in the
open fireplace the logs crumbled and disintegrated to ashen caves
wherein the palpitating jewels of the heat were held. Except for this
old-fashioned warmth, there was none other in the room, whose white
wainscoting and pillars, low ceilings and quaint chimney-piece,
characterized one of those agreeably proportioned houses still to be
found in lower New York around Washington Square.

Bulstrode had received about half an hour ago a letter whose qualities
and suggestions were something disturbing to him:

"There is such a thing, believe me" (Mary Falconer wrote in the pages
which Bulstrode opened to read for the twentieth time), "as the _gloom_
of Christmas, Jimmy. People won't frankly own to it. They're afraid
of seeming sour and crabbed. But don't you, who are so exquisitely apt
to feelings--to other people's feelings,--at once confess it? It
attacks the spinster in the bustling winter streets as she is elbowed
by some person, exuberantly a mother, and so arrogantly laden with
delicious-looking parcels that she is almost a personal Christmas tree
herself. I'm confident this 'gloom of Christmas' grips the wretched
little beings at toy-shop windows as they stand 'choosin'' their
never-to-be-realized toys. I'm sure it haunts the vagrant and the
homeless in a city fairly redolent of holly and dinners, and where the
array of other people's homes is terrifying. And, my dear friend, it
is so horribly subtle that no doubt it attacks others whose only grudge
is that their hearths are not built for Christmas trees or the hanging
of stockings. But these unfortunates are not saying anything aloud,
therefore we must not pry!

"There's a jolly house-party on at the Van Schoolings'. We're to go
down to-morrow to Tuxedo and pass Christmas night, and you are, of
course, asked and wanted. Knowing your dread of these family
feasts--possibly from just such a ghost of the gloom--I was sure you
would refuse. But it's a wonderful place for a talk or two, and I
shall hope you will go--will come, not even follow, but go down with
me."

There was more of the letter--there alw