One night as I had dressed to dine out and stepped into the street, looking up at the snow that hid the stars and silenced one's footsteps on the pavement, a woman emerged from the gloom, and before I knew what she was doing, had caught my arm. I shook her off, thinking her a beggar or something worse, and would have passed on my way had she not again struggled to detain me. I stopped, and was on the point of roughly ordering her to let me go, when I looked down into her veiled face and saw that it was Teresa Grossensteck.
"Hugo!" she said. "Hugo!"
I could only repeat her name and regard her helplessly.
"Hugo," she said, "I am cold. Take me upstairs. I am chilled through and through."
"Oh, but Teresa," I expostulated, "it wouldn't be right. You know it wouldn't be right. You might be seen."
She laid her hand, her ungloved, icy hand, against my cheek.
"I have been here an hour," she said. "Take me to your rooms. I am freezing."
I led her up the stairs and to my little apartment. I seated her before the fire, turned up the lights, and stood and looked at her.
"What have you come here for?" I said. "I've paid your father— paid him a month ago."
She made no answer, but spread her hands before the fire and shivered in the glow. She kept her eyes fixed on the coals in front of her and put out the tips of her little slippered feet. Then I perceived that she was in a ball gown and that her arms were bare under her opera cloak.