you."

He hesitated, and I had the impression that he felt himself about to
yield to a stealing tide of inertia; then, "Thank you-I'll take it,"
he answered shortly.

I hoped that this incident might set up some more direct
communication between us. Frome was so simple and straightforward
that I was sure his curiosity about the book was based on a genuine
interest in its subject. Such tastes and acquirements in a man of
his condition made the contrast more poignant between his outer
situation and his inner needs, and I hoped that the chance of giving
expression to the latter might at least unseal his lips. But
something in his past history, or in his present way of living, had
apparently driven him too deeply into himself for any casual impulse
to draw him back to his kind. At our next meeting he made no
allusion to the book, and our intercourse seemed fated to remain as
negative and one-sided as if there had been no break in his reserve.

Frome had been driving me over to the Flats for about a week when
one morning I looked out of my window into a thick snow-fall. The
height of the white waves massed against the garden-fence and along
the wall of the church showed that the storm must have been going on
all night, and that the drifts were likely to be heavy in the open.
I thought it probable that my train would be delayed; but I had to
be at the power-house for an hour or two that afternoon, and I
decided, if Frome turned up, to push through to the Flats and wait
there till my train came in. I don't know why I put it in the
conditional, however, for I never doubted that Frome would appear.
He was not the kind of man to be turned from his business by any