Dunn met her with a brougham; Fifth Avenue was slippery with filthy, melting slush; yet, somehow, into her mind came the memory of her return from her first opera—­the white avenue at midnight, the carriage, lamps lighted, speeding through the driving snow.  Yesterday, the quiet, untainted whiteness of childhood; to-day, trouble and stress and stained snow melting into mud—­so far behind her lay innocence and peace on the long road she had travelled!  So far had she already journeyed—­toward what?

She pressed her lips more tightly together and buried her chin in her sable muff.  Beside her, her maid sat shivering and stifling yawn after yawn and thinking of dinner and creature comforts, and of Dunn, the footman, whom she did ardently admire.

The big red brick house among its naked trees seemed sad and deserted as the brougham flashed into the drive and stopped, the horses stamping and pawing the frozen gravel.  Geraldine had never before been away from home so long, and now as she descended from the carriage and looked vaguely about her it seemed as though she had, somehow, become very, very young again—­that it was her child-self that entered under the porte-cochere after the prescribed drive that always ended outdoor exercise in the early winter evenings; and she half expected to see old Howker in the hall, and Margaret trotting up to undo her furs and leggings—­half expected to hear Kathleen’s gay greeting, to see her on the stairs, so young, so sweetly radiant, her arms outstretched in welcome to her children who had been away scarcely a full hour.

“I’d like to have a fire in my bedroom and in the upper library,” she said to Hilda, who had smilingly opened the door for her.  “I’ll dine in the upper library, too.  When Mr. Mallett arrives, you need not come up to announce him.  Ask him to find me in the library.”

To Mrs. Farren she said:  “Nobody need sit up.  When Mr. Mallett leaves, I will put the chains on and bolt everything.”

She was destined not to keep this promise.

* * * * *

Bathed, her hair brushed and dressed, she suffered her maid to hook her into a gown which she could put off again unassisted—­one of those gowns that excite masculine admiration by reason of its apparent inexpensiveness and extreme simplicity.  It was horribly expensive, of course—­white, and cut out in a circle around her neck like a young girl’s gown; and it suited Geraldine’s slender, rounded throat and her dainty head with its heavy, loosely drawn masses of brown hair, just shadowing cheeks and brow.

When the last hook was looped she dismissed her maid for the night; Hilda served her at dinner, but she ate little, and the waitress bore away the last of the almost untouched food, leaving her young mistress seated before the fire and looking steadily into it.

The fire was a good one; the fuel oak and ash and beech.  The flames made a silky, rustling sound; now and then a coal fell with a softly agreeable crash and a swarm of golden sparks whirled up the chimney, snapping, scintillating, like day fireworks.