t, little girl?" It was a term of endearment derived,
undoubtedly, from a theatrical source, in which he sometimes indulged.

She did not answer. Surprisingly, to-day, she did not care. All she could
think of, all she wanted was to go on and on beside him with the world
shut out--on and on forever. She was his--what did it matter? They were
on their way to Boston! She began, dreamily, to think about Boston, to
try to restore it in her imagination to the exalted place it had held
before she met Ditmar; to reconstruct it from vague memories of childhood
when, in two of the family peregrinations, she had crossed it. Traces
remained of emotionally-toned impressions acquired when she had walked
about the city holding Edward's hand--of a long row of stately houses
with forbidding fronts, set on a hillside, of a wide, tree-covered space
where children were playing. And her childish verdict, persisting to-day,
was one of inaccessibility, impenetrability, of jealously guarded wealth
and beauty. Those houses, and the treasures she was convinced they must
contain, were not for her! Some of the panes of glass in their windows
were purple--she remembered a little thing like that, and asking her
father the reason! He hadn't known. This purple quality had somehow
steeped itself into her memory of Boston, and even now the colour stood
for the word, impenetrable. That was extraordinary. Even now! Well, they
were going to Boston; if Ditmar had said they were going to Bagdad it
would have been quite as credible--and incredible. Wherever they were
going, it was into the larger, larger life, and walls were to crumble
before them, walls through which they would pass, even as they rent the
white veil of the storm, into regions of beauty....

And now the world seemed abandoned to them alone, so empty, so still were
the white villages flitting by; so empty, so still the great parkway of
the Fells stretching away and away like an enchanted forest under the
snow, like the domain of some sleeping king. And the flakes melted
silently into the black waters. And the wide avenue to which they came
led to a sleeping palace! No, it was a city, Somerville, Ditmar told her,
as they twisted in and out of streets, past stores, churches and
fire-engine houses, breasted the heights, descended steeply on the far
side into Cambridge, and crossed the long bridge over the Charles. And
here at last was Boston--Beacon Street, the heart or funnel of it, as one
chose