* * * * * CHAPTER XXX. THROUGH THE SNOW. Two days later Hermia went to a large dinner, and Quintard took her in. She was moody and absent. She felt nervous, she said, and he need not be surprised if he found her very cross. Quintard told her to be as cross as she liked. He had his reasons for encouraging her in her moods. After the dinner was over she wandered through the rooms like a restless ghost. Finally she turned abruptly to Quintard. “Take me home,” she said; “I shall stifle if I stay in this house any longer. It is like a hot-house.” “But what will Mrs. Dykman say?” “I do not care what she says. She is not ready to go, and I won’t stay any longer. I will go without saying anything to her about it.” “Very well. There will be comment, but I will see if they have a telephone and order a cab.” “I won’t go in a cab. I want to walk.” “But it is snowing.” “I like to walk in the snow.” Quintard thought it best to let her have her way. Moreover, a walk through the snow with her would be a very pleasant thing. He hunted up a housemaid and borrowed a pair of high overshoes. Hermia had on a short gown; she pulled the fur-lined hood of her long wrap about her head, Quintard put on the overshoes, and they managed to get out of the house unnoticed. The snow was falling, but the wind lingered afar on the borders of the storm. “You had better let me call a cab.” “I will _not_ drive,” replied Hermia; and Quintard shrugged his shoulders and offered his arm. The walk was not a long one under ordinary circumstances; the house at which the dinner had been given was in Gramercy Park; but, with a slippery pavement and snow-stars in one’s eyes, each block is a mile. Quintard had an umbrella, but Hermia would not let him raise it. She liked to throw back her head and watch the snow in its tumbling, scurrying, silent fall. It lay deep in the long, narrow street, and it blotted out the tall, stern houses with a merry, baffling curtain of wee, white storm-imps. Now and again a cab flashed its lantern like a will-o’-the-wisp. Hermia made Quintard stop under one of the electric lamps. It poured its steady beams through the storm for a mile and more, and in it danced the sparkling crystals in infinite variety of form and motion. About the pathway pressed the soft, unlustrous army, jealous of their transformed comrades, like stars that sigh to spring from the crowded milky way. Down that luminous road hurried the tiny radiant shapes, like coming souls to the great city, hungry for life. Hermia clung to Quintard, her eyes shining out of the dark. “Summer and the country have nothing so beautiful as this,” she whispered. “I feel as if we were on a deserted planet, and of hateful modern life there was none. I cannot see a house.” “I see several,” said Quintard.