A royal battle ensued. The wind, seeming to redouble its fury at sight of a fresh victim, roared at her, tore at her, then turning and twisting, appeared to shake her as some low born parent shakes his child. Snow cut her face. The blue cape, wrapping about her more than once, tripped her for a near fall.
“But it’s warm! Oh, so warm!” she breathed. Then, even in the midst of all this, she asked herself the meaning of all this strange mystery of the night, and, of a sudden, the sight of Laurie stepping into that tortuous chute flashed back upon the screen of her memory.
Stopping stock still to grasp a post of the elevated’s steel frame, she steadied herself and tried to think. Should she turn back? Should she make one more attempt to rescue Laurie from whatever plight he may have gotten himself into?
For a moment, swaying like a dead leaf on a tree, she clung there.
“No! No!” she said at last, “I wouldn’t go back there to-night! Not for worlds!” She made one desperate leap across the street and was the next moment beating her way up the steel stairway to the elevated.
Once aboard the well heated train, with the fur lined cape adding its cozy warmth to her chilled and weary body, she relaxed for the first time to think in a quiet way of the night’s affair.
A careful review of events convinced her that she had behaved in quite a wild and insane manner at times, but that on the whole the outcome was quite satisfactory. Certainly she could not have been expected to return home without a wrap on a night such as this. Surely she had had nothing whatever to do with Laurie’s giving away his pass-out, nor of his flinging himself so recklessly down the parcel chute. He was almost a stranger to her. Why, then, should she concern herself with the outcome of an affair which he had clearly entered into of his own free will?
On this last point she could not feel quite comfortable, but since the elevated train was hurling her homeward and since she could not, had she used her utmost will-power, have driven herself back into that great darkened store, and since there was no likelihood of her being admitted without a pass, she concluded that she must still be moving in the path of destiny.
In strange contrast to the wild whirling storm outside, she found her room a cozy nook of comfort. After throwing off her street clothes and going through a series of wild gymnastics that came very near to flying, she drew on her dream robe, threw a dressing gown across her shoulders then sank into a great overstuffed chair. There, curled up like a squirrel in a nest of leaves, she gave herself over to cozy comfort and to thoughts.
She had arrived at a very comforting one—which was that since she had worked until ten this night she need not report for duty until twelve the next day—when a spot of color caught her eye. A tiny flash of crimson shone out from a background of midnight blue. The midnight blue was the rare cape which she had hung against the wall.