When the maid came into the adjoining room a few moments later, Elizabeth said: "Gusta, please hand me that box of candy."
Elizabeth arranged herself in still greater comfort, put a bit of the chocolate in her mouth, and opened her book. "Gusta, you're a comfort," she said. "Catch me going out on a day like this!"
Mrs. Ward came home at noon, and when she learned that Elizabeth had spent the morning in the library, she took on an air of such superiority as was justified only in one who had not allowed even a blizzard to interfere with the serious duties of life. She had learned several new signals at the whist club and, as she told Elizabeth with a reproach for her neglect of the game, she had mastered at last Elwood's new system. But Elizabeth, when she had had her luncheon, returned to the library and her book. She stayed there an hour, then suddenly startled her mother by flinging the volume to the floor in disgust and running from the room and up the stairs. She came down presently dressed for the street.
"Don't be put long, dear; remember the dinner," Mrs. Ward called after her.
As she turned in between the high banks of snow piled along either side of the walk, Elizabeth felt the fine quality of the air that sparkled with a cold vitality, as pure as the snow that seemed to exhale it. She tossed her head as if to rid it of all the disordered fancies she had gathered in the unreal world of the romance with which she had spent the day. Then for the first time she realized how gigantic the storm had been. Long processions of men armed with shovels, happy in the temporary prosperity this chance for work had brought, had cleared the sidewalks. On the avenue the snow had been beaten into a hard yellow track by the horses and sleighs that coursed so gaily over it. The cross-town trolley-cars glided along between the windrows of the snow the big plow had whirled from the tracks. Little children, in bright caps and leggings, were playing in the yards, testing new sleds, tumbling about in the white drifts, flinging snowballs at one another, their laughter and screams harmonizing with the bells. Claybourne Avenue was alive; the solitary bell that Elizabeth had heard jingling in the still air that morning had been joined by countless strings of other bells, until now the air vibrated with their musical clamor. Great Russian sledges with scarlet plumes shaking at their high-curved dashboards swept by, and the cutters sped along in their impromptu races, the happy faces of their occupants ruddy in their furs, the bells on the excited horses chiming in the keen air. At the corner of Twenty-fifth Street, a park policeman, sitting his magnificent bay horse, reviewed the swiftly passing parade. The pedestrians along the sidewalk shouted the racers on; as the cutters, side by side, rose and fell over the street-crossing a party of school-boys assailed them with a shower of snowballs.
Elizabeth knew many of the people in the passing sleighs; she knew all of those in the more imposing turnouts. She bowed to her acquaintances with a smile that came from the exhilaration of the sharp winter air, more than from any joy she had in the recognition. But from one of the cutters Gordon Marriott waved his whip at her, and she returned his salute with a little shake of her big muff. Her gray eyes sparkled and her cheeks against her furs were pink. Every one was nervously exalted by the snow-storm that afternoon, and Elizabeth, full of health and youthful spirit, tingled with the joy the snow seemed to have brought to the world.
II
His house was all illumined; the light streaming from its windows glistened on the polished crust of the frozen snow, and as Stephen Ward drove up that evening, he sighed, remembering the dinner. He sprang out, slammed the door of his brougham and dashed indoors, the wheels of his retreating carriage giving out again their frosty falsetto. The breath of cold air Ward inhaled as he ran into the house was grateful to him, and he would have liked more of it; it would have refreshed and calmed him after his hard day on the Board.
As he entered the wide hall, Elizabeth was just descending the stairs. She came fresh from her toilet, clothed in a dinner gown of white, her round arms bare to the elbow, her young throat just revealed, her dark hair done low on her neck, and the smile that lighted her gray eyes pleased Ward.
As she went for her father's kiss Elizabeth noted the cool outdoor atmosphere, and the odor of cigar smoke and Russia leather that always hung about his person.