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—"