harsh spring of which Roger Patton had told her. Her spring--to
lose it forever--with its lilacs and the lazy sweetness it
stirred in her heart. She was laying away that spring--afterward
she would lay away that sweetness.

With a gradual insistence the storm broke. Sally Carrol felt a
film of flakes melt quickly on her eyelashes, and Harry reached
over a furry arm and drew down her complicated flannel cap. Then
the small flakes came in skirmish-line, and the horse bent his
neck patiently as a transparency of white appeared momentarily on
his coat.

"Oh, he's cold, Harry," she said quickly.

"Who? The horse? Oh, no, he isn't. He likes it!"

After another ten minutes they turned a corner and came in sight
of their destination. On a tall hill outlined in vivid glaring
green against the wintry sky stood the ice palace. It was three
stories in the air, with battlements and embrasures and narrow
icicled windows, and the innumerable electric lights inside made
a gorgeous transparency of the great central hall. Sally Carrol
clutched Harry's hand under the fur robe.

"It's beautiful!" he cried excitedly. "My golly, it's beautiful,
isn't it! They haven't had one here since eighty-five!"

Somehow the notion of there not having been one since eighty-five
oppressed her. Ice was a ghost, and this mansion of it was
surely peopled by those shades of the eighties, with pale faces