ths, she passed the little pool. There was the bench! But
empty.

Then she sat down on that bench, and looked out at the naked wilderness
of trees, at the ice in the pond, at the sodden brown, dead grasses. The
place was wildly forlorn and bare. When they had last been here the air
had been tinged with the haunting autumn, the leaves had been falling,
the pool had been deep with the heavens. And again she thought:

"This is the bench we sat on; and it was here, that morning, that we
quarreled; this is the little pond, and those the trees--but how
changed! how changed!"

Then as she sat there she beheld the miracle of color. Behind her,
between the black tree trunks, the setting sun was a liquid red
splendor, daubing some low clouds with rosiness, and all about her, in
the turn between day and night, the world, which before was a blend in
the strong light, now divided into a myriad sharp tints. The air held a
tinge of purple, the distance a smoky violet, the brown of the grasses
was a strong brown, the black of the trunks intensely black. Out among
distant trees she saw a woman and child walking, and the child's scarlet
cloak seemed a living thing as it swayed and moved. How sharp and
distinct were the facts of earth! how miraculously tinted! what tones of
blue and red, of purple and black! It was the sunset singing its hymn of
color, and it made her feel keenly the mystery and beauty of life--the
great moments of solution and peace--the strange human life that
inhabits for a brief space this temple of a million glories. But
something was missing, there was a great lack, a wide emptiness. She
resolved then to see Joe.

It was not, however, until the next afternoon that she took the elevated
train to Ninth Street and then the crosstown car over the city. She
alighted in the shabby street; she walked up to the entrance; she saw
over the French windows a big canvas sign, "Strike Headquarters."
Within, she thought she saw a mass of people. This made her hesitate.
She had expected to find him alone. And somehow, too, the place was even
shabbier, even meaner than she had expected. And so she stood a
moment--a slender, little woman, her hands in a muff, a fur scarf bound
about her throat, her gray eyes liquid and luminous, a rosy tint in her
cheeks, her lips parted and releasing a thin steam in the bitter winter
air. Overhead the sky was darkening with cloud-masses, a shriveling
wind dragged the dirty street, and the world