"One can remember dreams."
"I can't remember mine. But sometimes I have a curious impression upon me."
"May I hear it?"
"Why not? It is upon me now. It is this: that when I dreamt--before I remember anything, you know----"
"Yes."
"That it was always snowing, as it is now."
What subtle vapour affected the fair and beautiful girl--surely subject to no distempered fancies, glowing as she was with health, and with pulses beating joyously--that she should suddenly pause and gaze upon the snow with a troubled air? What subtle vapour affected the wan and exhausted woman behind her that at the same moment she also should pause and hold her thin, transparent hand to her eyes, to shut out the white glare of the snow that troubled her soul? There was a curious resemblance in their attitudes as they thus stood in silence--the girl in the light, the woman in the shade.
A gust of wind, if it did not dispel the vapour, stirred the actors in this scene into motion, and the girl and her lover--for there could be no doubt of the relation they bore to each other--resumed their walk, Mrs. Lenoir still following them with steps that grew more feeble every moment.
Of the conversation between the lovers not a word had reached her. Now and again she heard the sound of the girl's voice when it was raised higher than usual, but the words that accompanied it were lost upon her. She had formed a distinct purpose during the journey, if in her weak condition of mind and body any purpose she wished to carry out can be called distinct. She would keep them in sight until the man had taken his departure, and the girl was alone. Then she would accost the girl, and look into her face. That was the end of her thought; the hopes and fears which enthralled and supported her were too wild and whirring for clear interpretation. And yet it appeared as though she herself feared to be seen; for once or twice when the man or the girl looked back, Mrs. Lenoir shrank tremblingly and in pitiable haste into the obscurity of the deeper shadows of the night.
They were now in the east of London, near Rosemary Lane, and the girl paused and stopped her companion, with the remark: