the girl would be somewhere about, would emerge from her hiding place,
would even look for him.

Absolutely unwarranted it was. He laughed while he stood before the
little glass and trimmed his moustache, tried to make his black tie sit
straight, and shook down his dinner jacket so that it should lie upon
the shoulders without a crease. His brown eyes were very bright. "I
look younger than I usually do," he thought. It was unusual, even
significant, in a man who had no vanity about his appearance and
certainly never questioned his age or tried to look younger than he was.
Affairs of the heart, with one tumultuous exception that left no fuel
for lesser subsequent fires, had never troubled him. The forces of his
soul and mind not called upon for "work" and obvious duties, all went to
Nature. The desolate, wild places of the earth were what he loved;
night, and the beauty of the stars and snow. And this evening he felt
their claims upon him mightily stirring. A rising wildness caught his
blood, quickened his pulse, woke longing and passion too. But chiefly
snow. The snow whirred softly through his thoughts like white, seductive
dreams.... For the snow had come; and She, it seemed, had somehow come
with it--into his mind.

And yet he stood before that twisted mirror and pulled his tie and coat
askew a dozen times, as though it mattered. "What in the world is up
with me?" he thought. Then, laughing a little, he turned before leaving
the room to put his private papers in order. The green morocco desk that
held them he took down from the shelf and laid upon the table. Tied to
the lid was the visiting card with his brother's London address "in case
of accident." On the way down to the hotel he wondered why he had done
this, for though imaginative, he was not the kind of man who dealt in
presentiments. Moods with him were strong, but ever held in leash.