"Hugo," she said, "I am cold. Take me upstairs. I am chilled
through and through."
"Oh, but Teresa," I expostulated, "it wouldn't be right. You know
it wouldn't be right. You might be seen."
She laid her hand, her ungloved, icy hand, against my cheek.
"I have been here an hour," she said. "Take me to your rooms. I am
freezing."
I led her up the stairs and to my little apartment. I seated her
before the fire, turned up the lights, and stood and looked at
her.
"What have you come here for?" I said. "I've paid your father--
paid him a month ago."
She made no answer, but spread her hands before the fire and
shivered in the glow. She kept her eyes fixed on the coals in
front of her and put out the tips of her little slippered feet.
Then I perceived that she was in a ball gown and that her arms
were bare under her opera cloak.
At last she broke the silence.
"How cheerless your room is," she said, looking about. "Oh, how
cheerless!"
"Did you come here to tell me that?" I said.
"No," she said. "I don't know why I came. Because I was a fool, I
suppose--a fool to think you'd want to see me. Take me home,
Hugo." She rose as she said this and looked towards the door. I
pressed her to take a little whiskey, for she was still as cold as
death and as white as the snow queen in Hans Andersen's tale, but
she refused to let me give her any.
"Take me home, please," she repeated.
Her carriage was waiting a block away. Hendricks, the footman,
received my order with impassivity and shut us in together with
the unconcern of a good servant. It was dark in the carriage, and
neither of us spoke as we whirled through the snowy streets. Once
the lights of a passing hansom illumined my companion's face and I
saw that she was crying. It pleased me to see her suffer; she had
cost me eleven weeks of misery; why should she escape scot-free!
"Hugo," she said, "are you coming back to us, Hugo?"
"I don't know," I said.
"Why don't you know?" she asked.
"Oh, because!" I said.
"That's no answer," she said.
There was a pause.
"I was beginning to care too much about you," I said. "I think I
was beginning to fall in love with you. I've got out of one false
position. Why should I blunder into another?"
"Would it be a false position to love me?" she said.
"Of course that would a good deal depend on you," I said.
"Suppose I wanted you to," she said.
"Oh, but you couldn't!" I said.
"Why couldn't I?" she said.
"But forty," I objected; "nobody loves anybody who's forty, you
know."
"I do," she said, "though, come to think of it, you were thirty-
nine--when--when it first happened, Hugo."
I put out my arms in the dark and caught her to me. I could not
believe my own good fortune as I felt her trembling and crying
against my breast. I was humbled and ashamed. It was like a dream.
An old fellow like me--forty, you know.
"It was a mighty near thing, Teresa," I said.
"I guess it was--for me!" she said.
"I meant myself, sweetheart," I said.
"For both of us then," she said, in a voice between laughter and
tears, and impulsively put her arms round my neck.