"Please, please," she interposed despairingly. "Don't go into that again. It's too late. I am really very sleepy now. I hate to turn you out in the storm, but you _must_ go. If the servants should--heavens, please go!" "You're right! I'm off. I'll be as quiet as a mouse, so don't worry. This has been the most gallant night of my life. I'll live it over a hundred times in my dreams. By the way, what train do you take in the morning?" He was shaking hands with her, standing beside her chair. There was a new light in his eyes. "The ten-fifteen, if it isn't snowbound. Why?" "Never mind. I just asked," he said. He was thinking of violets and a trip to the ferry. "Don't do anything so absurd, Mr. Van Pycke," she said severely, trying to read his thoughts. He laughed blithely, full of certain early morning enterprise. "Good-bye. Oh, just listen to the wind!" She shuddered. "Don't leave the fire," he said. "And _do go to bed_! Remember, you are to catch the ten-fifteen." He tiptoed into the hall. There was not a sound in the house. A minute later the outer doors closed behind him, gently. He was out in the cold, bitter night, plowing his way through snowdrifts three and four feet deep, bound for the hotel next door, the nearest place of refuge. In the office he left a call for seven o'clock. Not in ten years had he done anything so amazing. "She helps to support a family--a helpless father and two small sisters," he said to himself as he crept into bed. "But, it wouldn't be the same thing supporting my governor. _I should say not!_" Later on, very drowsily: "I was sure I had seen her before. Little Mary Pembroke! How I adored her! But it seems to me her hair was yellow then. It's black now. Still, I dare say that's better than if it had been black then and yellow now. Seven o'clock! What an ungodly hour to get up. But I'll have to get used to it." Miss Pembroke resisted the desire to look after him from the front window. She couldn't bear the thought of scraping the frost from the window pane with her fingernails, for one thing; for another, he might take it into his head to look back. So she went to bed, thinking of him--as she had been doing for an hour or more before his amazing second appearance. "He was such a shy boy," she reflected. "But he was the best looking thing. Dear me, how long ago it seems! And those silly love letters I wrote to him and never mailed. What funny things children are!" At nine o'clock the next morning she was called to the telephone. She was at breakfast, and her bag was ready for the train. An early glance from the window had filled her with misgivings. The street was absolutely impassable, it seemed to her. "I won't talk to the reporters," she said to Stokes. "It isn't a reporter, Miss. It's a gentleman." "Don't be a snob, Stokes. Who is it?" "It's Mr. Van Pycke, Miss." She started. Then she flushed warmly. "Say to him, Stokes, that I have gone," she said, after a moment.