Five months had passed since their last interview in this square had
afforded the wandering lovers the refuge of a damp, depressing calmness
near a boulevard of continual movement close to a great railroad
station. The hour of the appointment was always five and Julio was
accustomed to see his beloved approaching by the reflection of the
recently lit street lamps, her figure enveloped in furs, and holding
her muff before her face as if it were a half-mask. Her sweet voice,
greeting him, had breathed forth a cloud of vapor, white and tenuous,
congealed by the cold. After various hesitating interviews, they had
abandoned the garden. Their love had acquired the majestic importance of
acknowledged fact, and from five to seven had taken refuge in the fifth
floor of the rue de la Pompe where Julio had an artist's studio. The
curtains well drawn over the double glass windows, the cosy hearth-fire
sending forth its ruddy flame as the only light of the room, the
monotonous song of the samovar bubbling near the cups of tea--all
the seclusion of life isolated by an idolizing love--had dulled their
perceptions to the fact that the afternoons were growing longer, that
outside the sun was shining later and later into the pearl-covered
depths of the clouds, and that a timid and pallid Spring was beginning
to show its green finger tips in the buds of the branches suffering the
last nips of Winter--that wild, black boar who so often turned on his
tracks.

Then Julio had made his trip to Buenos Aires, encountering in the other
hemisphere the last smile of Autumn and the first icy winds from the
pampas. And just as his mind was becoming reconciled to the fact that
for him Winter was an eternal season--since it always came to meet
him in his change of domicile from one extreme of the planet to the
other--lo, Summer was unexpectedly confronting him in this dreary