After tea she asked him, would he walk out with her for a little while? and he in wonder went.

The streets were brightly lighted, and the moon was up.  The ice cracked crisp under their feet.  Sleighs, with two riders in each, shot merrily by.  People were laughing in groups before the shop-windows.  In the glare of a jeweller’s counter somebody was buying a wedding-ring, and a girl with red cheeks was looking hard the other way.

“Let’s get away,” said Asenath,—­“get away from here!”

They chose by tacit consent that favorite road of hers over the eastern bridge.  Their steps had a hollow, lonely ring on the frosted wood; she was glad when the softness of the snow in the road received them.  She looked back once at the water, wrinkled into thin ice on the edge for a foot or two, then open and black and still.

“What are you doing?” asked Dick.  She said that she was wondering how cold it was, and Dick laughed at her.

They strolled on in silence for perhaps a mile of the desolate road.

“Well, this is social!” said Dick at length; “how much farther do you want to go?  I believe you’d walk to Reading if nobody stopped you!”

She was taking slow, regular steps like an automaton, and looking straight before her.

“How much farther?  Oh!” She stopped and looked about her.

A wide young forest spread away at their feet, to the right and to the left.  There was ice on the tiny oaks and miniature pines; it glittered sharply under the moon; the light upon the snow was blue; cold roads wound away through it, deserted; little piles of dead leaves shivered; a fine keen spray ran along the tops of the drifts; inky shadows lurked and dodged about the undergrowth; in the broad spaces the snow glared; the lighted mills, a zone of fire, blazed from east to west; the skies were bare, and the wind was up, and Merrimack in the distance chanted solemnly.

“Dick,” said Asenath, “this is a dreadful place!  Take me home.”

But when he would have turned, she held him back with a sudden cry, and stood still.

“I meant to tell you—­I meant to say—­Dick!  I was going to say—­”

But she did not say it.  She opened her lips to speak once and again, but no sound came from them.

“Sene! why, Sene, what ails you?”

He turned, and took her in his arms.

“Poor Sene!”

He kissed her, feeling sorry for her unknown trouble.  He wondered why she sobbed.  He kissed her again.  She broke from him, and away with a great bound upon the snow.

“You make it so hard!  You’ve no right to make it so hard!  It ain’t as if you loved me, Dick!  I know I’m not like other girls!  Go home and let me be!”

But Dick drew her arm through his, and led her gravely away.  “I like you well enough, Asenath,” he said, with that motherly pity in his eyes; “I’ve always liked you.  So don’t let us have any more of this.”