“Got to heat it is good, Doll!  All I got to do is ask once, and my word’s law round here.  Here, take a swallow and warm up, hon.  You don’t need to go home if you warm up right.”

But the glass tinked against her teeth.

“I—­I can’t’”

“Gowann, kiddo!”

“I’ll take some home with me to warm me up when I get in bed, Jimmie.  I—­Not that kind, give it to me red like you did last Tuesday night, without the sparkles.  That’s the kind to warm me up.  Order a bottle of red without the sparkles, Jimmie—­without the sparkles.  I—­I can’t stand no more bubbles to-night.”

He helped her into her coat, and she leaned to him with a little movement of exhaustion that tightened his hold of her.

“Hurry a cab, waiter; the lady’s sick!”

“Ain’t I a nut, though!”

“Poor wet little Doll, I didn’t think you was much more’n damp!  You gotta make up for this to-morrow night, Doll.  Eight sharp, Doll, and no funny business to-morrow night.”

“Eight sharp!”

“Swell little sport you are, gettin’ the chills!  But we understand each other, don’t we, Doll?”

“Sure, Jimmie!”

“Come on, hon.  Shakin’ like a leaf, ain’t you?  Wait till I get you out in the cab, I’ll warm you up.  You look just like a Christmas doll, all rigged up in that hat and that star and all—­just like a Christmas doll.”

“My grizzly, my brown grizzly!  Gee, I nearly forgot my grizzly!”

And she packed the huge toy under her arm, along with the iridescent ball and the gewgaws of her plunder, and out into the cab, where an attendant tucked a bottle of the red warming wine between them.

“Ready, Doll?”

“Ready.”

The silent storm had continued its silent work, weaving its blanket softer, deeper.  The straggling pedestrians of early morning bent their heads into it and drove first paths through the immaculate mantle.  The fronts of owl cars and cabs were coated with a sugary white rime.  Broadway lay in a white lethargy that is her nearest approach to sleep.

Snow-plows were already abroad clearing tracks, dry snow-dust spinning from under them.  At Longacre Square the flakes blew upward in spiral flurries, erratic, full of antics.  The cab snorted, plunged, leaped forward.  Mr. Fitzgibbons inclined toward the little huddle beside him.

“Sweetness, now I got you!  You little sweetness you, now I got you, sweetness!”

“Jimmie!  Quit!  Quit!  You—­you old—­you—­you—­”

The breath of a forgotten perfume and associations webby with age stir through the lethargy of years.  Memories faded as flowers lift their heads.  The frail scent of mignonette roused with the dust of letters half a century old, and eyes too dim and watery to show the glaze of tears turn backward fifty years upon the mignonette-bowered scene of love’s young dream.  A steel drawing-room car rolling through the clean and heavy stench of cow pasture, and a steady-eyed, white-haired capitalist, rolling on his rolling-stock, leans back against the upholstery and gazes with eyes tight closed upon a steady-eyed, brown-haired youngster herding in at eventide.  The whiff of violets from a vender’s tray, and a young man dreams above his ledger.  The reek of a passing brewer’s wagon, and white faces look after, suddenly famished.