had never lost
their charm, as the city itself had. He had grown into the habit of
going out whenever he wished to escape the paltry decoration, the hot
colors, the vitiated air, of his boarding-place and the importunities
of his fellow-boarders. He went out whenever he wanted to think great
and refreshing thoughts, or whenever he felt the need of beauty or the
presence of life.

XXVII.

BRADLEY'S LONG-CHERISHED HOPE VANISHES.

It had been snowing all the afternoon, and the shrubbery hung heavy and
silent with heaped, clinging, feathery snow, dazzling white by contrast
with the dark sustaining branches, and the yellow lamps flamed warmly
amid the all-surrounding steely blue and glistening white. The damp
pavements, where the snow had melted, were banded with gold and crimson
from the reflected light of the lamps and the warning glare of car and
carriage lights.

As Bradley breathed the pure air and walked soundlessly along the
narrow paths and looked across the unflecked, untrodden snow up to the
vast and silent dome, he shuddered in wordless delight. He hungered to
share it with Ida. It was like fairy-land--so far removed from daylight
reality; and yet the sound of sleigh-bells, the occasional shouts of
coasters, and the laughter of girls added a familiar human quality to
it all, and added an ache to the mysterious shuddering delight of it
all. It was so evanescent; it would decay so quickly. The wind, the
morning sun, would destroy it.

He walked up to the lonely esplanade, and saw the city's lights shine
below him like rubies and amethysts, and saw far beyond the snow-heaped
highlands, above which Jupiter hung poised, serene and lone, the king
of the western sky.

How far away all this seemed from the brazen declamation, the
monotonous reiterations of the reading-clerk, and from the sharp clank
of the speaker's gavel! His ear wearied, his heart sick of the whole
life of the farcical legislature, with its flood of corrupt bills, got
back serenity and youth and repose in the presence of the snows, the
silences, and the stars.

Again the impulse seized him to write to Ida and show her his whole
soul; to dare and end once for all his ache of suspense. He went back
to his room, and seized pen and paper. Everything he wrote seemed too
formal or too presumptuous. At last he finished a short letter--

_Dear Miss Wilbur_:--

I do not know how to begin to say what I want to say. I am afraid
of