loped suddenly from a mere spot on a map into a romance made into
brick; and when a ray of sunlight pierced the heavy fog, and lay like a
white wing aslant the few falling snowflakes, it seemed to her that the
shadowy buildings lost their sinister aspect and softened into a
haunting and mysterious beauty. Somewhere in that place of mystery and
adventure Oliver was waiting for her! He was a part of that vast
movement of life into which she was going. Then, youth, from which hope
is never long absent, flamed up in her, and she was glad that she was
still beautiful enough to cause strangers to turn and look at her.

But this mood, also, passed quickly, and a little later, while she
rolled through the grey streets, into which the slant sunbeams could
bring no colour, she surrendered again to that terror of the unknown
which had seized her when she stood in the station. The beauty had
departed from the buildings; the pavements were dirty; the little
discoloured piles of snow made the crossings slippery and dangerous; and
she held her breath as they passed through the crowded streets on the
west side, overcome by the fear of "catching" some malign malady from
the smells and the filth. The negro quarters in Dinwiddie were dirty
enough, but not, she thought with a kind of triumph, quite so dirty as
New York. When the cab turned into Fifth Avenue, she took her
handkerchief from her nostrils; but this imposing street, which had not
yet emerged from its evil dream of Victorian brownstone, impressed her
chiefly as a place of a thousand prisons. It was impossible to believe
that those frowning walls, undecorated by a creeper or the shadow of a
tree, could really be homes where people lived and children were born.

At first she had gazed with a childish interest and curiosity on the
houses she was passing; then the sense of strangeness gave place
presently to the exigent necessity of reaching Oliver as soon as
possible. But the driver appeared indifferent to her timid taps on the
glass at his back, while the horse progressed with the feeble activity
of one who had spent a quarter of a century ineffectually making an
effort. Her impatience, which she had at first kept under control, began
to run in quivers of nervousness through her limbs. The very richness of
her personal life, which had condensed all experience into a single
emotional centre, and restricted her vision of the universe to that
solitary window of the soul through which