He would spend half the year in America, in the West, which he liked far better than the East; and the other half he could spend having what he would have called “a great big bat” in Europe. He might go into European financiering and teach those old fogies a thing or two—Clavering indulged in many Alnaschar dreams about this time. One afternoon in the latter part of January Elizabeth went out for her usual solitary walk. It had been very cold, with snow, and the thermometer that day suddenly jumped into the sixties, bringing a damp white fog which enveloped everything. Elizabeth walked straight down the street on which she lived, without regard to where she was going; she meant to be out of doors only for so many hours, and to find in the loneliness of a walk a change from the loneliness of the house. It was within a week of the time she had received McBean’s letter, and it lay heavy on her heart. She had walked but a few squares, when she heard a step behind her which she recognized as Clavering’s. She stopped involuntarily, the red blood surging into her pale face. In a moment Clavering was by her side. “I saw you go out, and followed you,” he said. Elizabeth made no reply. He had never joined her on the street before, although sometimes she had passed him getting in and out of his automobile or driving behind a notable pair of sorrels. But this time he had not only joined her—he had followed her. Elizabeth’s sudden flushing was by no means lost on Clavering. They walked on due east through the mist which enveloped all things, the snow still piled in drifts along the edges of the streets. They spoke little, but Elizabeth felt instinctively that Clavering had something of consequence to say to her when they got into the unfamiliar part of the town, where he could be certain of being unobserved. The street, which had been fashionable as far as Sixteenth Street, grew semifashionable, and then became a region of lodging–houses, places with dressmakers’ signs, and an occasional small shop. Then, growing more and more remote, it became a street of comfortable, quiet houses, tenanted by people to whom the West End of Washington mattered as little as the west end of Bagdad. By that time they had gone a mile. They came to one of those small triangular parks which abound in Washington, where there are seats under the trees and asphalt walks winding in and out of shrubbery. Elizabeth, under the spell of compulsion which Clavering had cast upon her, made no objection to entering the park with him. Usually it was completely open to observation, but now the soft and clinging fog drew a misty curtain between the little park and the world. Clavering led the way to a bench among a clump of evergreens, and Elizabeth, without a word of protest, sat down upon the bench, the Senator at her side.