Fred was so delighted with watching the gas-burner, and listening to the wild music which floated through it, that he did not at first observe that the wind had risen and was blowing almost a gale.  Presently, in his speculations as to the cause of such a sudden flood of melody, he hit on the possibility of a current of air.

“But, then, how comes the air to be so full of music?  Never mind,—­I’ll put the window down.”

However, just as he was putting it down, a snow-flake, one of a hundred, all pressing for the same point, flew past him, and alighted on the green velvet tabouret.

It was nothing,—­only a snow-flake,—­and another time, Fred would have thought nothing of it.  But in the novel awakening of his faculties, even a snow-flake had a new interest.  With intense eagerness he watched the movement of the little thing,—­and yet, feeling that he might be on forbidden ground, he had the presence of mind to seem not to see or hear.  If inanimate Nature were once to suspect his new insight, what a bustle there would be!  He almost closed his eyes, and lay still, where he could watch and yet seem asleep.  His prudence and caution were well rewarded.

The snow-flake was, as he suspected, as much alive as the wind; and that was singing, shouting, dying away in ecstasies, at this very moment.

He glanced at her.  Lithe, sparkling, graceful, she gathered her soft drapery about her, and stood poised delicately on one foot, while she looked around the apartment in which she found herself.  Fred could see that she was moulded more beautifully than the Graces,—­by so much more as Nature is fairer than all Art,—­and that she had an inward pure coldness, beside which Diana’s was only stone.  Yet it was not indifference, like that of the wild huntress,—­not an incapacity to feel, but only that her time had not come; when it should, she would melt as well as another.  Now she stood still and calm.  She did not once look at him.  She had seen human beings before,—­plenty of them.  Something else attracted her,—­thrilled her, evidently; for the faintest rose-color suffused her beautiful form; she changed her attitude, and bent forward her graceful head.

Something about “warming his hands by thinking on the frosty Caucasus” passed through Fred’s mind, and some law of association impelled him to look at the fire.  It was queer enough, that, as many times as he had looked at that fire by the hour together, he had never before noticed its shape or expression.  Only last night, he had watched it, dancing and flickering just as it did now, and never once suspected the truth!

Mailed figures!  Yes, plenty of them,—­golden-helmeted and sworded like the seraphim!  A glorious band, gathering, twining, shooting past each other,—­jousting, tilting,—­with blazing banners, and a field broader than that of the “Cloth of Gold”; for this reached to and mingled with the clouds—­yea, tinted them with flame-color and roses,—­and garlanded the earth with crimson blossoms that nestled among her forests on the far-off horizon.  What a wide field, indeed!  And how far might these blazes and flames go, when once they set out?  To the stars, perhaps.  Fred did not see what should stop them.  The atmosphere might, possibly.  He must study that out.