had come to know, which ran straight through the town and on into a
more thinly-settled suburb. It was a good, clear path, and I should
be able to have a splendid walk without meeting probably more than a
dozen people in the course of it. Just as I passed the last square of
closely-built town-houses, and began to come upon the stretching white
landscape before me, as I trudged along, turning my head a little
aside to escape the brunt of the driving snow, I heard an exclamation
of surprise, and a man's voice said, "You _here_, Miss Linton?"

It was he, Mr. Lawrence. There he stood, his eyes brilliant with the
excitement of the storm, his cheek aglow with exercise, looking, as
the old women say, "the very picture of a man." I am very sensitive to
beauty, and his seems to me very great: it draws me to him.

"Yes it is I," I said (we had both stopped). "I wanted exercise and
air, and something to change my frame of mind; so I came out for a
tramp."

He turned with me, and we walked on. In a moment more he said, "Will
you take my arm? It will be easier to keep step and walk fast then."

I took it, and he looked down at me and said, with an inscrutable
smile, which haunts me yet, I suppose because I can't make out its
meaning, "Do you believe in fate?"

"If you mean by fate something which the will is powerless to resist,
against which it is unavailing to struggle, I do not," I answered. "Do
you, Mr. Lawrence?"

He laughed, not a pleasant laugh, albeit musical, but as if his smile