The clouds hung gray and low over the old gray city. From the river the wind swept in, raw and cutting, and the Laurentides lay in the purple haze which betokens a coming storm. The terrace was deserted; the fountain in the Ring had stopped playing, and narrow Sainte Anne Street was turned into a tunnel thick with flying dust. Indian summer was at an end, and winter was at hand. With her ruddy hair flying and her broad hat tilted rakishly over one ear, Nancy came fighting her way down Saint Louis Street and across the Place d’Armes. Her pulses were pounding gayly with the intoxication of the cold; her face glowed with the struggle of meeting the boisterous wind. From his ducal casement, Barth eyed her wishfully. Then he returned to his book. Nancy, in such a mood as that, defied his powers of comprehension. Upon one former occasion he had seen her thus, a veritable spirit of the storm. Experience had taught him certain lessons. Mr. Cecil Barth looked down on Nancy’s erect head and blazing cheeks, on her vigorous, elastic tread. Looking, he sighed, and prudently remained hidden in his room.
Ten minutes later, Nancy’s shut hand descended upon her father’s door. The door was locked.
“Oh, daddy, are you there?” she called ingratiatingly.
There was no reply, and she tapped again. This time, the doctor answered.
“Busy, Nancy.”
“Really and truly?” she wheedled.
“Yes.”
“Oh, how mean of you! How long?”
“I can’t tell.”
Her lips to the keyhole, she heaved an ostentatious sigh. The sigh brought forth no sign of relenting.
“I am very lonesome, daddy,” she said then. “It is too bad of you to neglect me like this. But, if you really won’t let me in, I’m going out on the ramparts for a breath of fresh air.”
“Well,” the doctor’s accent bespoke his manifest relief. “Go on, dear; but don’t get blown away.”
“No; and don’t you fall asleep over your horrid old manuscripts, and forget to let yourself out and come down to supper,” she cautioned him. “Good by.”
Going back to her room, she took off her jacket and broad hat, and replaced them with a sealskin coat and toque. Then she went running down the stairs and turned out into Sainte Anne Street, already powdered thickly with falling flakes.
With the coming of the snow, the wind was dying, and Nancy made her way easily enough around the corner into Buade Street, past the Chien d’Or, gnawing his perennial bone high in the air, and out to the northeast corner of the city wall where she halted, breathless, beside one of the venerable guns.
Just then, the door of the doctor’s room opened, and Adolphe St. Jacques stepped out into the hall.
“Courage, boy!” said the doctor kindly.
And St. Jacques nodded in silence, as he gripped the outstretched hand.
As a matter of course, he took his way straight in the direction of the ramparts. St. Jacques could think of but one person in the world, just then; and that person was Nancy Howard. He overtook her at the angle of the ancient wall. Later, it occurred to him that there was a symbolic meaning in the situation, as he came hurrying onward, with Laval at his left, Nancy at his right, and the brief, empty stretch of road before him. At the time, however, he had but one thought, and that was to get to Nancy.
He found her standing with her back towards the direction from whence he came. One arm lay lightly across the cannon, the other rested on the old gray parapet which made a fitting background for her slight figure in its dark cloth skirt and dark fur coat. Her shoulders were sprinkled with the fine, soft snow and, against the snowy air above the river, her vivid hair, loosened by the wind, stood out in a gleaming aureole above the high collar of her coat.
“Miss Howard!”
She turned with a start to find St. Jacques at her side. Releasing the cannon, she held out her hand in blithe greeting.
“Isn’t this superb?” she exclaimed breathlessly. “I am so glad you have come to enjoy it with me. See how the river is all blown into a chopping sea! And the snow over Lévis! And look at those thick clouds of snow that keep scurrying across the river! How can people stay in-doors and lose it all?”
For an instant, St. Jacques felt himself dazzled by her beauty and by her strong vitality. In all his past experience, there had been no other Nancy. He sought to get a firm grasp upon himself. The instant’s delay caught Nancy’s quick attention, and she shrank from him, as she saw his rigid face and lambent eyes. Then she rallied and laughed lightly.
“What is it, M. St. Jacques?” she queried. “You look as if you had seen a ghost.”
“So I have.”
“Was it a pretty one?” she asked nervously, as she locked her hands above the crowned monogram on the gun, and stood looking at him a little defiantly.
He shook his head.
“It was the ghost of what I might have been,” he answered quietly.
Again Nancy sought to dominate the scene.
“So bad as that?” she asked, with a futile attempt at flippancy.
He disregarded her words.
“Miss Howard,” he said slowly; “I have come to say good by.”
Instantly her tone changed.
“Oh, I am so sorry! Is it for a long time?”
“I may not come back while you are here.”
It was plain that he was struggling hard to hold himself steady; and Nancy, at a loss to explain the situation, nevertheles............