im; with a futility of which he felt the pathos, he made her defend him
now to Alice. Alice was very hard and cold, as when he saw her last; her
mother's words fell upon her as upon a stone; even Mrs. Pasmer's tears,
which Dan made her shed, had no effect upon the haughty girl. Not that
he cared now.

The blizzard of the previous days had whirled away; the sunshine lay
still, with a warm glisten and sparkle, on the asphalt which seemed to
bask in it, and which it softened to the foot. He loitered by the gate
of the little park or plantation where the statue of General Jackson
is riding a cock-horse to Banbury Cross, and looked over at the
French-Italian classicism of the White House architecture with a pensive
joy at finding pleasure in it, and then he went on to the Arlington.

Miss Anderson was waiting for him in the parlour, and they went a long
walk up the avenues and across half the alphabet in the streets, and
through the pretty squares and circles, where the statues were sometimes
beautiful and always picturesque; and the sparrows made a vernal
chirping in the naked trees and on the green grass. In two or three they
sat down on the iron benches and rested.

They talked and talked--about the people they knew, and of whom they
found that they thought surprisingly alike, and about themselves,
whom they found surprisingly alike in a great many things, and then
surprisingly unlike. Dan brought forward some points of identity which
he, and Alice had found in themselves; it was just the same with Miss
Anderson. She found herself rather warm with the seal-skin sacque she
had put on; she let him carry it on his arm while they walked, and
then lay it over her shoulders when they sat down. He felt a pang of
self-reproach, as if he had been inconstant to Alice. This was an old
habit of feeling, formed during the months of their engagement, when, at
her inspiration, he was always bringing himself to book about something.
He replied to her bitterly, in the colloquy which began to hold itself
in his mind, and told her that she had no claim upon him now; that
if his thoughts wandered from her it was her fault, not his; that she
herself had set them free. But in fact he was like all young men, with
a thousand, potentialities of loving. There was no aspect of beauty that
did not tenderly move him; he could not help a soft thrill at the sight
of any pretty shape, the sound of any piquant voice; and Alice had
merely been the synth