ave felt a
certain sympathy for the fragile young man on the seat beside her who
sat moodily staring through his glasses at the floor: and the group
across the aisle would surely have moved her to disgust. Two couples
were seated vis-a-vis, the men apparently making fun of a "pony" coat
one of the girls was wearing. In spite of her shrieks, which drew
general attention, they pulled it from her back--an operation regarded
by the conductor himself with tolerant amusement. Whereupon her
companion, a big, blond Teuton with an inane guffaw, boldly thrust an
arm about her waist and held her while he presented the tickets. Janet
beheld all this as one sees dancers through a glass, without hearing the
music.

Behind her two men fell into conversation.

"I guess there's well over a foot of snow. I thought we'd have an open
winter, too."

"Look out for them when they start in mild!"

"I was afraid this darned road would be tied up if I waited until
morning. I'm in real estate, and there's a deal on in my town I've got
to watch every minute...."

Even the talk between two slouch-hatted millhands, foreigners, failed
at the time to strike Janet as having any significance. They were
discussing with some heat the prospect of having their pay reduced by
the fifty-four hour law which was to come into effect on Monday. They
denounced the mill owners.

"They speed up the machine and make work harder," said one. "I think we
goin' to have a strike sure."

"Bad sisson too to have strike," replied the second pessimistically. "It
will be cold winter, now."

Across the black square of the window drifted the stray lights of the
countryside, and from time to time, when the train stopped, she gazed
out, unheeding, at the figures moving along the dim station platforms.
Suddenly, without premeditation or effort, she began to live over again
the day, beginning with the wonders, half revealed, half hidden, of that
journey through the whiteness to Boston.... Awakened, listening, she
heard beating louder and louder on the shores of consciousness the waves
of the storm which had swept her away--waves like crashing chords of
music. She breathed deeply, she turned her face to the window, seeming
to behold reflected there, as in a crystal, all her experiences, little
and great, great and little. She was seated once more leaning back in
the corner of the carriage on her way to the station, she felt
Ditmar's hand working in her own, and she heard h