forgive you," she said,
with a girlish dignity which sat well upon her, "and perhaps I have made
too much of it, but you see I am so much alone, and I think so much."

He wanted to ask her questions, of why she was there and of why she was
alone. But something in her manner forbade, and so they spoke of other
things until she left him.

Geoffrey went out later for a walk in the blinding snow. All night it had
snowed and the storm had a blizzard quality, with the wind howling and
the drifts piling to prodigious heights. Geoffrey faced the elements with
a strength which won the respect of Richard Brooks who, also out in it,
with his dog Toby, was battling gloriously with wind and weather.

"If we can reach the shelter of the pines," he shouted, "they'll break
the force of the storm."

Within the wood the snow was in winding sheets about the great trees.

"What giant ghosts!" Geoffrey said. "Yet in a month or two the sap will
run warm in their veins, and the silence will be lapped by waves of
sound--the singing of birds and of little streams."

"I used to come here when I was a boy," Richard told him. "There were
violets under the bank, and I picked them and made tight bunches of them
and gave them to my mother. She was young then. I remember that she
usually wore white dresses, with a blue sash fluttering."

"You lived here then?"

"No, we visited at my grandfather's, a mile or two away. He used to drive
us down, and he would sit out there on the point and fish,--a grand old
figure, in his broad hat, with his fishing creel over his shoulder. There
were just two sports that my grandfather loved, fishing and fox-hunting;
but he was a very busy doctor and couldn't ride often to hounds. But he
kept a lot of them. He would have had a great contempt for Toby. His own
dogs were a wiry little breed."

"My grandfather was blind, and always in his library. So my boyhood was
different. I used to read to him. I liked it, and I wouldn't exchange my
memories for yours, except the violets--I should like to pick them here
in the spring--perhaps I shall--I told Mrs. Bower I would take a room for
a month or more--and since we have spoken of violets--I may wait for
their blooming."

He laughed, and as they turned back, "I have found several things to keep
me," he said, but he did not name them.

All day Anne was aware of the presence in the house of the young guests.
She was aware of Winifred Ames' blue cloak and of Eve's roses.