Nathan placed a chair for her so she could dry her damp footwear and skirts. He threw off his coat, for it was bungling and uncomfortable. Madelaine insisted upon it. She insisted, too, that he smoke; she saw the stem of his briar protruding from the breast pocket of his shirt.
“I know you want to smoke,” she laughed. “A man looks so gloriously comfortable and relaxed when he’s ruminating over his pipe.”
“I can’t fill it,” returned Nathan lamely. “Not with one hand. It’s of no consequence.”
“I’ll fill it for you,” declared the girl. It was not an offer. It was a simple statement.
Nathan surrendered pipe and tobacco tin and she filled his briar. She had no nonsense about it. She did not affect to be coy or awkward, or act as if men who smoked pipes were some type of monster who occasionally devoured women and little girls. She simply filled it and tamped the tobacco down hard and that was the beginning and end of the whole matter. Neither did she act as though either pipe or tobacco should be handled with tongs. She might have been filling men’s pipes for a livelihood since her school days. And when she handed it across, and the pipe was drawing evenly, she made him pull the low box on which he sat over close to the comfortable stove near her feet. Then as Sigurd might have sat at the feet of Brünhilde “with the flames all around them, while she sang him the sacred runes, of war, of pity, of safety, of thought—wise words, sweet words, speech of great game,” so Nathan sat before Madelaine for the first time that night and once more in his life the clocks of time went unwound.
Outside, the snow was now falling heavily, smothering the city, burying them in. It hushed all the sounds of the world. No wind stirred. The flakes were great polls of wool that piled quickly. So it would snow for a week, two weeks, and create the winter-bound Siberia of old-time story and conception. They were alone, these two, in the heart of great Asia. Alone together! Little else mattered! With one big talon hand wrapped about the briar, a strong forefinger pressing into its bowl from time to time, Nathan leaned forward, half toward Madelaine, half toward the little stove.
They sat in silence for several minutes, a silence so great that Nathan could hear the woman’s wrist watch ticking distinctly. Finally Madelaine said:
“You and I have an acquaintance in common, I believe. Bernice Gridley. Isn’t that so?”
“You know—Bernie—Gridley?” Nathan forgot to smoke, so great was his surprise.
“We attended the same preparatory school at Mount Hadley, Massachusetts, for a time.”