trees along the Mall the air was purple as wisterias. The
sheep-field, toward Broadway, was smooth and white, with a thin gold wash
over it. At five o'clock the carriage came for us, but Cressida sent the
driver home to the Tenth Street house with the message that she would
dine uptown, and that Horace and Mr. Poppas were not to wait for her.
As the horses trotted away we turned up the Mall.

"I won't go indoors this evening for any one," Cressida declared. "Not
while the sky is like that. Now we will go back to the laurel wood.
They are so black, over the snow, that I could cry for joy. I don't know
when I've felt so care-free as I feel tonight. Country winter, country
stars--they always make me think of Charley Wilton."

She was singing twice a week, sometimes oftener, at the Metropolitan that
season, quite at the flood-tide of her powers, and so enmeshed in
operatic routine that to be walking in the park at an unaccustomed hour,
unattended by one of the men of her entourage, seemed adventurous. As we
strolled along the little paths among the snow banks and the bronze
laurel bushes, she kept going back to my poor young cousin, dead so long.
"Things happen out of season. That's the worst of living. It was untimely
for both of us, and yet," she sighed softly, "since he had to die, I'm
not sorry. There was one beautifully happy year, though we were so poor,
and it gave him--something! It would have been too hard if he'd had to
miss everything." (I remember her simplicity, which never changed any
more than winter or Ohio change.) "Yes," she went on, "I always feel very
tenderly about Charley. I believe I'd do the same thing right over again,
even knowing all that had to come after. If I were nineteen tonight, I'd
rather go sleigh-riding with Charley Wilton than anything else I've ever
done."

We walked until the procession of carriages on the driveway, getting
people home to dinner, grew thin, and then we went slowly toward the
Seventh Avenue gate, still talking of Charley Wilton. We decided to dine
at a place not far away, where the only access from the street was a
narrow door, like a hole in the wall, between a tobacconist's and a
flower shop. Cressida deluded herself into believing that her incognito
was more successful in such non-descript places. She was wearing a long
sable coat, and a deep fur hat, hung with red cherries, which she had
brought from Russia. Her walk had given her a fine colour, and she
looked so