I tried to call Jean up in my memory, to visualize her profile, her eyes, her hair, her lips, the tilting lift of her ankle, the joyous stride of her young, free limbs. It was all a mist; a picture out of focus. It was a nebulous thing, vague, indistinct, unformed. Through and beyond it I saw the grey snow falling eternally. Then about this central figure--if one may call a thing so ethereal a figure--gathered a circle of light, an irradiance glowing on a million crystals of frost; it grew and glowed and brightened until it haloed about her head. It was Jean! "Oh! my God" I cried. "Not yet! Not yet!" I fell in the snow. I floundered aimlessly in the broken crust. . . . When I came back to realization the vision was gone. Only the snow, shot through with its thin mists of light, fell on forever. Was I freezing? The thought prodded me to consciousness. I drew a hand from my mitt and thrust it against my face. The fingers were warm. The skin of my forehead would wrinkle. I was able to wriggle my toes in my boots. No, I was not freezing. My troubles were of the mind; my bodily engines were functioning properly. . . . . . . . I got the wind over my right shoulder and pressed on. Jean wanted me to keep her guessing. That was the easy, slangy way of putting it. Poetic license, she had called it. What she meant was that I must always have something in reserve; some mysterious corner of myself into which she had not explored. Something to keep up the sense of mystery, the spirit of adventure, in which romance is born, without which romance must die. No doubt she was right. After all, why _should_ she marry me? What was I more than a biped beast of burden, an animal designed to eat, sleep, labor, and reproduce itself? . . . Spoof was something more than that. Was I wise to interrupt them at all? Why not leave them alone?