Across the black square of the window drifted the stray lights of the countryside, and from time to time, when the train stopped, she gazed out, unheeding, at the figures moving along the dim station platforms.  Suddenly, without premeditation or effort, she began to live over again the day, beginning with the wonders, half revealed, half hidden, of that journey through the whiteness to Boston....  Awakened, listening, she heard beating louder and louder on the shores of consciousness the waves of the storm which had swept her away—­waves like crashing chords of music.  She breathed deeply, she turned her face to the window, seeming to behold reflected there, as in a crystal, all her experiences, little and great, great and little.  She was seated once more leaning back in the corner of the carriage on her way to the station, she felt Ditmar’s hand working in her own, and she heard his voice pleading forgiveness—­for her silence alarmed him.  And she heard herself saying:—­“It was my fault as much as yours.”

And his vehement reply:—­“It wasn’t anybody’s fault—­it was natural, it was wonderful, Janet.  I can’t bear to see you sad.”

To see her sad!  Twice, during the afternoon and evening, he had spoken those words—­or was it three times?  Was there a time she had forgotten?  And each time she had answered:  “I’m not sad.”  What she had felt indeed was not sadness,—­but how could she describe it to him when she herself was amazed and dwarfed by it?  Could he not feel it, too?  Were men so different?...  In the cab his solicitation, his tenderness were only to be compared with his bewilderment, his apparent awe of the feeling he himself had raised up in her, and which awed her, likewise.  She had actually felt that bewilderment of his when, just before they had reached the station, she had responded passionately to his last embrace.  Even as he returned her caresses, it had been conveyed to her amazingly by the quality of his touch.  Was it a lack all women felt in men? and were these, even in supreme moments, merely the perplexed transmitters of life?—­not life itself?  Her thoughts did not gain this clarity, though she divined the secret.  And yet she loved him—­loved him with a fierceness that frightened her, with a tenderness that unnerved her....

At the Hampton station she took the trolley, alighting at the Common, following the narrow path made by pedestrians in the heavy snow to Fillmore Street.  She climbed the dark stairs, opened the dining-room door, and paused on the threshold.  Hannah and Edward sat there under the lamp, Hannah scanning through her spectacles the pages of a Sunday newspaper.  On perceiving Janet she dropped it hastily in her lap.

“Well, I was concerned about you, in all this storm!” she exclaimed.  “Thank goodness you’re home, anyway.  You haven’t seen Lise, have you?”

“Lise?” Janet repeated.  “Hasn’t she been home?”

“Your father and I have been alone all day long.  Not that it is so uncommon for Lise to be gone.  I wish it wasn’t!  But you!  When you didn’t come home for supper I was considerably worried.”