She looked up and smiled at him and told him to sit down, but did not move from her position. "Mother's out at a matinee with Daisy. I got away early this afternoon. Do you hate snow, Mr. Breton?" "I hate it to-day. I've got the dumps. I had to find someone to talk to or I'd have gone screaming into the street----" "Couldn't find anyone better, so took me--thank you for the compliment. But I like the snow. Your pool's more like a pool now than ever, Mr. Breton." He went across to the window and stood there looking at the little square now white with the gaunt trees rising black from the heart of it and the grey houses that hemmed it in. Over it the snow, yellow and grey and then delicately white, swirled and tossed. He came back and sat down beside her and wondered at her neat comfort and air of calm control of all her emotions and desires. She, looking at him, saw that he was ill. Dark lines beneath his eyes, his cheeks pale and an air of picturesque melancholy that made her want first to laugh at him and then mother him. "I know what's the matter with you," she said, nodding her head. "What?" "Something to do. That's what you want." She turned towards him, looking at him with a little smile and yet with grave seriousness in her eyes. "Oh! Mr. Breton, why don't you? What is the use of sitting here month after month, doing nothing, just waiting for something to happen--something that can't happen unless you make it? Things don't fall into people's mouths just because they sit with them open." He coloured. "Everybody's always scolding me," he said. "Christopher--you--everybody. Nobody understands--how difficult...." He broke off. So intangible were his difficulties that no words would define them, and yet, God knew, they were real enough. "I know--" she said, nodding her head. "It's the thought of them all at Portland Place that's holding you back. You began by fancying that you wanted to cut their throats, and you still wouldn't mind slaughtering them if only they in their turn would do something definite. It's their doing _nothing_ that just holds you up. But really as long as your grandmother's alive I'm afraid that it's no good thinking of them. When she's dead--and she _can't_ live for ever--anything may happen. Meanwhile why not show them what you _can_ do?" "But what _can_ I do?" he answered her fiercely. "I've never been brought up to do anything--except what I oughtn't--There's my arm and one thing and another--Besides, there's more than that in it, Miss Rand. It's the fact that--well, that there's nobody that cares that's--so freezing. If only somebody minded----" As he spoke Rachel rose, beautifully, wonderfully, before him. There, as she had been on that first day when she had had tea there, bending forward, listening, her dark wondering eyes on his face.