"I should like to end things in this way," she continued musingly; "just us two, to plunge on and on and on into that quiet ice-field, until, at last, some pool shot up ahead—and then! To go out like that, quenched right in the heat of our lives; not chilled, piece by piece."
Sommers moved impatiently.
"It isn't time for that."
"No?" she asked rather than assented, and turned her face to the city. "I am not sure; sometimes I think it is the ripe time. There can be nothing more."
Sommers did not answer, but began to skate slowly. Half an hour later they climbed over the hills of shore ice, and he hurried away to the Keystone. Alves walked slowly south on the esplanade. The gray sea of ice was covered now with the winter sun. The pools and crevasses sent up sheets of steam. Her eyes followed the ice lingeringly. Once she turned back to the lake, but finally she started across the frozen grass plots in the direction of the temple. She could see from a distance a black figure seated on the portico, and she hastened her steps. She recognized the familiar squat, black-clothed person of Mrs. Ducharme. There, in the sunlight between the broken pillars, this gloomy figure seemed of ill omen. Alves regretted that she had turned back from the ice.
Mrs. Ducharme showed no sign of life until Alves reached the steps. She was worn and unkempt. A ragged straw hat but partly disguised her rumpled hair. Alves recalled what Miss M'Gann had said about her drinking.
"I've been to see you two, three times," Mrs. Ducharme said, in a hoarse, grumbling tone; "but you'se always out. This time I was a-going to wait if I'd stayed all night."
"Come in," Alves answered, unlocking the door. The woman dragged herself into the temple.
"Not so tidy a place as you and the other one had," she remarked mournfully.
Alves waited for her to declare her errand; but as she seemed in no haste to speak, she asked,