The blood throbbed at her brain and the quickened circulation warmed

her till she loosened the cloak at her throat and wondered, in a dazed

sort of way, why she had put it on on such a stifling night. Then she

remembered the snow and eagerly uplifted her flushed cheeks that the

falling flakes might cool them.

But of the icy grip of the storm she was wholly unconscious. There was

a mad exhilaration in facing the wild elements on such a night, the

exertion of forcing through the storm chimed in with her mood; each

snowdrift through which she fought her way was so much cruel injustice

beaten down. She felt that she had the strength and courage to walk to

the end of the earth and she went on and on, never thinking of the

storm, or her destination, or where she would rest that night. Her

head felt light, as if she had been drinking wine, and more than once

she stopped to mop the perspiration from her forehead. How absurd for

the snow to fall on such a sultry night, and foolish of those people

who had turned her out to die, thinking it was cold--the thermometer

must be 100. She paused to get her breath; a blast of icy wind caught

her cape, and almost succeeded in robbing her of it, and the chill

wrestled with the fever that was consuming her, and she realized for

the first time that it was cold.

"Well, what next?" she asked herself, throwing back her head and

unconsciously assuming the attitude of a creature brought to bay but

still unconquered.

"What next?" She repeated it with the dull despair of one who has

nothing further to fear in the way of suffering. The Fates had spent

themselves on her, she no longer had the power to respond. Suppose she

should become lost in a snowdrift? "Well, what did it matter?"

Then came one of those unaccountable clearings of the mental vision

that nature seems to reserve for the final chapter. Her quickened

brain grasped the tragedy of her life as it never had before. She saw

it with impersonal eyes. Anna Moore was a stranger on whose case she

could sit with unbiased judgment. Her mind swung back to the football

game in the golden autumn eighteen months ago, and she heard the cheers

and saw the swarms of eager, upturned faces and the dots of blue and

crimson, like flowers, in a great waving field. What a panorama of

life, and force, and struggle it had been! How typical of life, and

the end--but no, the end was not yet; there must be some justice in

life, some law of compensation. God must hear at last!




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