Asenath Martyn!" and went back to work with a purpose in her eyes.

She "asked out" a little earlier than usual, and went slowly home. Dick
was there before her; he had been taking a half-holiday. He had made the
tea and toasted the bread for a little surprise. He came up and said,
"Why, Sene, your hands are cold!" and warmed them for her in his own.

After tea she asked him, would he walk out with her for a little while?
and he in wonder went.

The streets were brightly lighted, and the moon was up. The ice cracked
crisp under their feet. Sleighs, with two riders in each, shot merrily
by. People were laughing in groups before the shop-windows. In the glare
of a jeweller's counter somebody was buying a wedding-ring, and a girl
with red cheeks was looking hard the other way.

"Let's get away," said Asenath,--"get away from here!"

They chose by tacit consent that favorite road of hers over the eastern
bridge. Their steps had a hollow, lonely ring on the frosted wood; she
was glad when the softness of the snow in the road received them. She
looked back once at the water, wrinkled into thin ice on the edge for a
foot or two, then open and black and still.

"What are you doing?" asked Dick. She said that she was wondering how
cold it was, and Dick laughed at her.

They strolled on in silence for perhaps a mile of the desolate road.

"Well, this is social!" said Dick at length; "how much farther do you
want to go? I believe you'd walk to Reading if nobody stopped you!"

She was taking slow, regular steps like an automaton, and looking
straight before her.

"How much farther? Oh!" She stopped and looked about her.

A wide young forest spread away at their feet, to the right and to the
left. There was ice on the tiny oaks and miniature pines; it glittered
sharply under the moon; the light upon the snow was blue; cold roads
wound away through it, deserted; little piles of dead leaves shivered; a
fine keen spray ran along the tops of the drifts; inky shadows lurked
and dodged about the undergrowth; in the broad spaces the snow glared;
the lighted mills, a zone of fire, blazed from east to west; the skies
were bare, and the wind was up, and Merrimack in the distance chanted
solemnly.

"Dick," said Asenath, "this is a dreadful place! Take me home."

But when he would have turned, she held him back with a sudden cry, and
stood still.

"I meant to tell you--I meant to say--Dick! I was going to say--"

But she did