the window with her toe. The beautiful French theatre, piebald with snow
and shadow, shone over the window-sill. The Cathedral clock struck out
ten chimes, whirling and singing over her head, the voices of the little
boys died down, the last had thrown his last snowball and gone to bed.
The steam rose up like a veil before the window, and once again,
between the grey walls of her bath--so like her cradle and her
coffin--she meditated upon the riches and treasure of the passing days.

"And yet," echoed the thoughts in that still water travelling still, "to
travel is not to move across the earth."

Peering back into the past, frowning in the effort to string forgotten
words together, Fanny whispered upon the surface of the water:

"The strange things of travel,
The East and the West,
The hill beyond the hill--"

But the poem was shattered as the voice of the bath woman called to her
through the door.

"You are well, Fraeulein?"

Fanny turned in her bath astonished. "Why, yes, thank you! Did you think
I was ill?"

"I didn't know. I daren't go to bed till I see you out, for last week we
had a woman who killed herself in here, drowned in the water. I have
just remembered her."