There is deep darkness again, and sleep, and when next I awake I am in the midst of a terrible March rain, and I run for refuge into Dodds’ Drug Store. It is the old Fifth and Monroe corner. I buy the early afternoon _Register_ from a bawling newsboy. It is dated March first, 2018. Soon the storm abates a little, but it is a freezing, thawing, wind-whistling, late afternoon. It is dusk, and I am walking South on what was once Third Street, but is now Mulberry Boulevard, with the Chicago and Alton railroad long gone. And I am with that girl who awakened me, Avanel Boone, and there is no poetry about it at all. It is obvious by the air with which she takes possession of me and hustles me down that rain and sleet-scourged avenue, that she considers herself the heroine of my story. But dear me, what stubborn material for a heroine. Here, after a century, woman is the same she always was. To put it in restrained phrases she is, in her disposition, like the weather. She scolds me for the unpressed state of my clothes, and my mussed hair, and my lack of air of distinction. She says I have slept in my clothes so much that they are in a perfectly abused condition. I admit that I have not consulted a tailor for some little time. She says I carry myself as though I were a ditch digger or were following the plough, instead of walking with a lady. She lashes me for what she alleges are my ridiculous ideas, and goes over the catalogue till it is impossible to enjoy the panorama that I glimpse through the bracing sleet and rain, and I scarcely care to look at her, the little devil,—though she is to be my heroine. The only flattering thing about the encounter is the air of settled proprietorship of this young lady. At length there is silence and I chase along meekly beside her under the umbrella, and cool down, and do her the honor to look her over as well as I can in the storm. Her face is half hidden by her flapping waterproof cape and we are walking under tremendous shade trees. I note her chin quite high in the air, her spirited profile set straight forward, and her cheeks, with color that goes like a blown-out flame and then comes again like a heart-beat.