Ailsa Paige, without interest.

But Celia had begun to write again. "I'll ask him," she said in
her softly preoccupied voice, "Saturday, I think."

"Oh, but I'm invited to the Cortlandt's," began Ailsa, and caught
her under lip in her teeth. Then she turned and walked noiselessly
into her bedroom, and sat down on the bed and looked at the wall.




CHAPTER IV

It was almost mid-April; and still the silvery-green tassels on the
wistaria showed no hint of the blue petals folded within; but the
maples' leafless symmetry was already veined with fire. Faint
perfume from Long Island woodlands, wandering puffs of wind from
salt meadows freshened the city streets; St. Felix Street boasted a
lilac bush in leaf; Oxford Street was gay with hyacinths and a
winter-battered butterfly; and in Fort Greene Place the grassy
door-yards were exquisite with crocus bloom. Peace, good-will, and
spring on earth; but in men's souls a silence as of winter.

To Northland folk the unclosing buds of April brought no awakening;
lethargy fettered all, arresting vigour, sapping desire. An
immense inertia chained progress in its tracks, while overhead the
gray storm-wrack fled away,--misty, monstrous, gale-driven before
the coming hurricane.