"It's like Doré's Inferno." Catherine shivered. "You remember? That frozen hell, with awful heads sticking up in the ice?"
"Let's walk along. You're cold." Buffeted, they went along the deserted drive, passing regularly from shadow into the burst of light under the yellow globes that hung above them. "I like that black sky," said Bill. "In New York we never have that."
"No." Catherine glanced westward, through bare limbs of trees. "See, there's the city glare, back there." She was warm again, her blood tingling under the dark rush of the wind; the black hidden movement of the water, the cold vasty black of the sky were exciting, like a shouted challenge.
"Here is shelter from the wind." Bill drew her into an angle made by the porch of a small summer pavilion. "You can put your head out to see the lake, without being knocked flat."
The wind racketed in the loose boards nailed along the lake side of the porch. Catherine leaned back, laughing, out of reach of the gusts. She could just catch the dim outline of Bill's face, his strong, aquiline profile.
"Bill!" She felt suddenly that in the dark, windy night there was nothing else human except Bill and herself; she wanted to burrow into his silence, his withdrawal. Her fingers brushed his arm in soft demand.
"Great, isn't it?" His voice was low and warm, walking under the rush of the wind. "Blows the nonsense clear out of you." He moved slightly so that his shoulder sheltered her. "Warm enough?"
"I shouldn't like to be here alone." She couldn't see his face distinctly—shadowy eye sockets, dark mouth. "I'd feel too little! You keep me life-size."
Silence, warm and comforting, like a secret place within the noise of the wind rattling at the boards, churning up the ice cakes.