"You mean the storm?" A twinkle of amusement came to Eaton's eyes. "It would be more interesting if it allowed a little more to be seen. At present there is nothing visible but snow."
"Is that the only way it affects you?" She turned to him, apparently a trifle disappointed.
"I don't exactly understand."
"Why, it must affect every man most as it touches his own interests. An artist would think of it as a background for contrasts—a thing to sketch or paint; a writer as something to be written down in words."
Eaton understood. She could not more plainly have asked him what he was.
"And an engineer, I suppose," he said, easily, "would think of it only as an element to be included in his formulas—an x, or an a, or a b, to be put in somewhere and square-rooted or squared so that the roof-truss he was figuring should not buckle under its weight."
"Oh—so that is the way you were thinking of it?"
"You mean," Eaton challenged her directly, "am I an engineer?"
"Are you?"
"Oh, no; I was only talking in pure generalities, just as you were."