better
go back."

The storm was beating upon her. But, looking from the city to the
drifted path, and back from the lonely path to the lighted city, she did
not stir.

"I should like to see it, just to look in the window, a little,--it
wouldn't hurt 'em any. Nobody'd know."

She turned, walking slowly where the snow lay pure and untrodden. On,
out of sight of the town, where the fields were still; thinking only as
she went, that nobody would know,--nobody would know.

She would see the old home out in the dark; she could even say good-by
to it quite aloud, and they wouldn't hear her, or come and drive her
away. And then--

She looked around where the great shadows lay upon the fields, felt the
weakening of her limbs, her failing breath, and smiled. Not Meg's smile;
a very quiet smile, with a little quiver in it. She would find a still
place under the trees somewhere; the snow would cover her quite out of
sight before morning,--the pure, white snow. She would be only Maggie
then.

The road, like some familiar dream, wound at last into the village. Down
the street where her childish feet had pattered in their playing, by the
old town pump, where, coming home from school, she used to drink the
cool, clear water on summer noons, she passed,--a silent shadow. She
might have been the ghost of some dead life, so moveless was her face.
She stopped at last, looking about her.

"Where? I most forget."

Turning out from the road, she found a brook half hidden under the
branches of a dripping tree,--frozen now; only a black glare of ice,
where she pushed away the snow with her foot. It might have been a
still, green place in summer, with banks of moss, and birds singing
overhead. Some faint color flushed all her face; she did not hear the
icicles dropping from the lonely tree.

"Yes,"--she began to talk softly to herself,--"this is it. The first
time I ever saw him, he stood over there under the tree. Let me see;
wasn't I crossing the brook? Yes, I was crossing the brook; on the
stones. I had a pink dress. I looked in the glass when I went home,"
brushing her soft hair out of her eyes. "Did I look pretty? I can't
remember. It's a great while ago."

She came back into the street after that, languidly, for the snow lay
deeper. The wind, too, had chilled her more than she knew. The sleet was
frozen upon her mute, white face. She tried to draw her cloak more
closely about her, but her hands refused to hold it. She looked