ten they separated,
curving about in corners by themselves, but always coming together again
in the centre of the rink; and when she left him thus Hibbert was
conscious of--yes, of missing her. He found a peculiar satisfaction,
almost a fascination, in skating by her side. It was quite an
adventure--these two strangers with the ice and snow and night!

Midnight had long since sounded from the old church tower before they
parted. She gave the sign, and he skated quickly to the shed, meaning to
find a seat and help her take her skates off. Yet when he turned--she
had already gone. He saw her slim figure gliding away across the snow
... and hurrying for the last time round the rink alone he searched in
vain for the opening she had twice used in this curious way.

"How very queer!" he thought, referring to the wire netting. "She must
have lifted it and wriggled under ...!"

Wondering how in the world she managed it, what in the world had
possessed him to be so free with her, and who in the world she was, he
went up the steep slope to the post office and so to bed, her promise to
come again another night still ringing delightfully in his ears. And
curious were the thoughts and sensations that accompanied him. Most of
all, perhaps, was the half suggestion of some dim memory that he had
known this girl before, had met her somewhere, more--that she knew him.
For in her voice--a low, soft, windy little voice it was, tender and
soothing for all its quiet coldness--there lay some faint reminder of
two others he had known, both long since gone: the voice of the woman he
had loved, and--the voice of his mother.

But this time through his dreams there ran no clash of battle. He was
conscious, rather, of something cold and clinging that made him think of
sifting snowflakes climbing slowly with entangling touch and thickness
round his feet. The snow, coming without noise, each flake so light
and tiny none can mark the spot whereon it settles, yet the mass of it
able to smother whole villages, wove through the very texture of his
mind--cold, bewildering, deadening effort with its clinging network of
ten million feathery touches.

III

In the morning Hibbert realised he had done, perhaps, a foolish thing.
The brilliant sunshine that drenched the valley made him see this, and
the sight of his work-table with its typewriter, books, papers, and the
rest, brought additional conviction. To have skated with a girl alone
at midni