“I’m afraid I haven’t, thank you,” Charlotte wrote back, and dismissed the maid with a word of sympathy for her necessary breasting of the drift-blown passage across the street.

“Oh, it’s awful out,” the girl said.  “I don’t think Mrs. Macauley knows how bad it is, not being out herself to-day, and Mr. Macauley away.”

Charlotte made up her fire afresh, and pulling the winged chair close sat down before it.  She was cold and weary, and her head felt very heavy.  She had put on a loose gown of a thin Japanese silk—­dull red in hue, a relic of other days.  Her hair was loosely braided and hung down her back in a long, dark plait.  Upon her feet were slippers, about her shoulders a white shawl of Granny’s.

All the gay and gallant aspect of her, as her friends knew her, was gone from her to-night, as she sat there staring into the fire.  She still shivered, now and then, in the too-thin red silk robe, and drew the shawl closer.  Her heart was as heavy as her head, her mind busy with retrospect and forecast, neither enlivening.  The courage which had sustained her through almost four years of endeavour was at a singularly low ebb to-night.  It had ebbed low at other times, but usually she had been able to summon it again by a mere act of the will, by a determination to be resolute, not to be downcast, never to allow herself so much as to imagine ultimate failure.  To-night, although she told herself that her depression was the result of physical fatigue, and fought with all her strength to conquer the hopelessness of the mood, she found herself in the end prostrate under the weight of thoughts heavier than the spirit could bear.

She sat there for an hour; then, still shivering, prepared to rake the ashes over the remains of the fire and go to bed.  It occurred to her suddenly that before closing things up below she would see if Madam Chase were asleep, or if she might need something hot to drink again, as sometimes happened.  She went wearily upstairs, her candle flickering in the narrow passageway.  It seemed, somehow, as if the whole house were full of small conflicting winds pressing into it through every loose window-frame and under each sunken threshold.

She stooped over the bed, the candle-light falling on the small, white face.  White—­how white!  With all its delicate fairness, had it ever looked like this before?  With a sudden fear clutching at her heart she held the little flame lower....

She groped her way half-blindly down the stairs, the candle left behind.  As she reached the foot a stamping sounded upon the porch outside the living-room door.  She ran toward it,—­never had sound of human approach been so madly welcome.  Before she could reach the door a knock fell upon it.

She wrenched at the latch, finding the door frozen into place, as it had been all through this weather.  She tugged in vain for a moment, then a voice called from the other side: