"Yes, Mamma."
"Go now ... go...."
They went; and the children took their leave.
Outside, it was snowing great flakes. The snowflakes had been falling all through the night over the small town out of an infinite land of death, out of infinite sky-plains of infinite death. And, after all the gloom of the dark nights that had been, the nights under the grey skies of storm and rain, it had snowed whiter and whiter out of the dense greyness of sky-plains and skyland, flakes falling upon flakes in a soft white shroud of oblivion that enveloped houses and people....
CHAPTER XXVIII
Outside, the snow was falling in great flakes. The parlour-maid had opened the door:
"But your cab isn't here yet, ma'am...."
"It doesn't matter. We'll walk."
"I must say, it's a little absurd of Mamma," said Van der Welcke, on the doorstep. "Must we go to Gerrit's ... in this weather? And has Addie gone too?... Was Mamma as anxious as all that?... It's snowing hard, Constance: it's enough to give one one's death, to go out in this weather...."