SNOWED IN 



it only brought vividly to my mind what an 

 incredible blank Griselle had left in it. And how 

 was one to get out with the snow coming down at 

 that rate ? It is the easiest thing in the world to 

 carry the flowers that annoy you into another room 

 and shut the door. But it is not so easy to get 

 rid of the odour they leave behind. Somehow that 

 girl had grown tenderly and softly like a wild vine 

 round my recollections. To grub up the whole 

 growth and scatter its petals was at once a duty 

 and a desecration. She was engaged to be mar 

 ried. Why had not my mature acumen discovered 

 that ; n time? Why had she not discovered it to 

 me as in duty bound when she saw, as a woman 

 must have seen, how matters were going ; and 

 when she did discover it to me, why the tears, 

 and the nervous fight, as if she, too, had been 

 drifting and had suddenly woke up to it all ? 



Still it snowed. The whirling flakes were piling 

 up a barrier of reminders, great banks of spotless 

 separation. When we went to bed it was snowing 

 still. Long after Charlie was asleep, I lay on my 

 back dumbly conscious of an unearthly stillness, 

 for all the entrances of sound were choked, and 

 the house itself, which ordinarily had so many 

 whispering voices, was muffled. The only lisp 

 that gave evidence of motion was the sap that was 

 stewing at the end of my backlog in the fireplace. 



When morning came, we were snowed in and the 

 flakes were coming down still, but finer and more 

 dispersed. We had to stand on a chair and 

 look out of the upper part of the sash to see the 



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