An impulse came to her to shriek aloud in her wrath and defiance, and to try and batter down the door and escape; but a timely thought restrained her, and she drew back from the temptation, her eyes flaming luridly, her temper raging. “They shall not baffle us, the cunning wretches! Arthur, my love, I am coming to you, though the whole world oppose!” she cried, wildly, rushing to the window and throwing up the sash. It had been snowing steadily for hours, though she did not know it. As she leaned out into the darkness a great gust of wind and big swirling flakes of snow stormed into the room, blowing out the light and clasping her in a cold embrace. CHAPTER X. A FEMININE WEAKNESS. In the small compass of thy clasping arms, In reach and sight of thy dear lips and eyes, There, there, for me the joy of Heaven lies. Outside, lo! chaos, terrors, wild alarms, And all the desolation fierce and fell Of void and aching nothingness makes hell. --ELLA WHEELER WILCOX. The night was black as Erebus, the wind cut like a knife, and the air was full of blinding snow that must have been falling for hours, it was banked so heavily against the window-ledge, almost freezing Cinthia’s hands as they plunged into it on leaning forward, for though she gasped and caught her breath as the wild elements blew in her face and tried to beat her back, she did not recoil from her fixed purpose, which was to drop out upon the top of the porch and climb down to the ground by the aid of a honeysuckle vine that wreathed over the trellis frame at one end. The icy blast that shrieked in her ears was not enough to chill the fiery ardor of her resentment at her father, and the yearning of her heart for the dear lover from whom she feared to be separated forever. Her tender young heart went out to him with an intensity of feeling as she peered out into the stormy darkness of the night, wondering if he was there waiting, and if he was growing impatient at her delay. “Ah, my love,” she murmured, impetuously, “I am coming to you--coming! Neither bolts nor bars, nor storm nor darkness, nor anything under Heaven, shall keep us apart!” The wind whistled past the eaves and seemed to take on an almost human voice of sorrowing, as though it echoed those dismal words: “Shall keep us apart, shall keep us apart!” Cinthia caught her breath and listened, it was so strange, that almost human wail of the wind sighing through the great pine tree on the corner. It seemed to be sobbing: “Apart, apart!” “How mournful it sounds!” she uttered, in an awe-stricken tone; then she climbed through the window and dropped with a dull thud out on the porch. Mrs. Flint heard the sound in her adjoining room, and muttered, drowsily: “It is the snow sliding down from off the roof.” Cinthia crawled to edge of the porch, and felt out carefully for the thick mat of the honeysuckle.