rdinarily she might have felt a certain sympathy for the
fragile young man on the seat beside her who sat moodily staring through
his glasses at the floor: and the group across the aisle would surely
have moved her to disgust. Two couples were seated vis-a-vis, the men
apparently making fun of a "pony" coat one of the girls was wearing. In
spite of her shrieks, which drew general attention, they pulled it from
her back--an operation regarded by the conductor himself with tolerant
amusement. Whereupon her companion, a big, blond Teuton with an inane
guffaw, boldly thrust an arm about her waist and held her while he
presented the tickets. Janet beheld all this as one sees dancers through
a glass, without hearing the music.

Behind her two men fell into conversation.

"I guess there's well over a foot of snow. I thought we'd have an open
winter, too."

"Look out for them when they start in mild!"

"I was afraid this darned road would be tied up if I waited until
morning. I'm in real estate, and there's a deal on in my town I've got to
watch every minute...."

Even the talk between two slouch-hatted millhands, foreigners, failed at
the time to strike Janet as having any significance. They were discussing
with some heat the prospect of having their pay reduced by the fifty-four
hour law which was to come into effect on Monday. They denounced the mill
owners.

"They speed up the machine and make work harder," said one. "I think we
goin' to have a strike sure."

"Bad sisson too to have strike," replied the second pessimistically. "It
will be cold winter, now."

Across the black square of the window drifted the stray lights of the
countryside, and from time to time, when the train stopped, she gazed
out, unheeding, at the figures moving along the dim station platforms.
Suddenly, without premeditation or effort, she began to live over again
the day, beginning with the wonders, half revealed, half hidden, of that
journey through the whiteness to Boston.... Awakened, listening, she
heard beating louder and louder on the shores of consciousness the waves
of the storm which had swept her away--waves like crashing chords of
music. She breathed deeply, she turned her face to the window, seeming to
behold reflected there, as in a crystal, all her experiences, little and
great, great and little. She was seated once more leaning back in the
corner of the carriage on her way to the station, she felt Ditmar's hand
working in her