“And do you get the puff of warm wind? Smelling of spring. Almond blossom, that’s what it is! A most marvelous scent of almond blossom. Isn’t it an extraordinary thing!” She went on triumphantly past the church, and came to the row of little old houses. She entered her own gate in the little railed entrance. “Here I am!” she said finally. “I’m home now. Thank you very much for coming with me.” She looked at the young policeman. His whole body was white as a wall with snow, and in the vague light of the arc lamp from the street his face was humble and frightened. “Can I come in and warm myself a bit?” he asked humbly. She knew it was fear rather than cold that froze him. He was in mortal fear. “Well!” she said. “Stay down in the sitting room if you like. But don’t come upstairs, because I am alone in the house. You can make up the fire in the sitting room, and you can go when you are warm.” She left him on the big, low couch before the fire, his face bluish and blank with fear. He rolled his blue eyes after her as she left the room. But she went up to her bedroom, and fastened her door. In the morning she was in her studio upstairs in her little house, looking at her own paintings and laughing to herself. Her canaries were talking and shrilly whistling in the sunshine that followed the storm. The cold snow outside was still clean, and the white glare in the air gave the effect of much stronger sunshine than actually existed. She was looking at her own paintings, and chuckling to herself over their comicalness. Suddenly they struck her as absolutely absurd. She quite enjoyed looking at them, they seemed to her so grotesque. Especially her self-portrait, with its nice brown hair and its slightly opened rabbit mouth and its baffled, uncertain rabbit eyes. She looked at the painted face and laughed in a long, rippling laugh, till the yellow canaries like faded daffodils almost went mad in an effort to sing louder. The girl’s long, rippling laugh sounded through the house uncannily. The housekeeper, a rather sad-faced young woman of a superior sort—nearly all people in England are of the superior sort, superiority being an English ailment—came in with an inquiring and rather disapproving look. “Did you call, Miss James?” she asked loudly. “No. No, I didn’t call. Don’t shout, I can hear quite well,” replied the girl. The housekeeper looked at her again. “You knew there was a young man in the sitting room?” she said. “No. Really!” cried the girl. “What, the young policeman? I’d forgotten all about him. He came in in the storm to warm himself. Hasn’t he gone?” “No, Miss James.” “How extraordinary of him! What time is it? Quarter to nine! Why didn’t he go when he was warm? I must go and see him, I suppose.” “He says he’s lame,” said the housekeeper censoriously and loudly. “Lame! That’s extraordinary. He certainly wasn’t last night. But don’t shout. I can hear quite well.”