Snow, somewhere back in his memory.  A frozen silence of it that was clean and thin to the smell.  The ridges in the rattan with which his father had whipped him the night after the Chinese laundry.  The fine white head of the dean of the law school.  His mother baking for Friday night in a blue-and-white gingham apron that enveloped her.  Red curls—­some one’s—­somewhere.  The string of tiny Oriental pearls that rose and fell with the little pouter-pigeon swell of a bosom.  Pretty perturbation.  His cousin’s sister-in-law, Ada.  A small hole in a pink-silk stocking, peeping like a little rising sun above the heel of a rubbed gilt slipper.  Josie’s slipper.

Something seemed suddenly to rise in Nicholas, with the quick capillarity of water boiling over.

The old familiar star-spangled red over which Sara had time after time laid sedative hand against his seeing, sprang out.  The pit of his passion was bottomless, into which he was tumbling with the icy laughter of breaking glass.

Then he struck out against the swinging door so that it ripped outward with a sough of stale air, striking Josie Drew, as she approached it from the room side, so violently that her teeth bit down into her lips and the tattling blood began to flow.

“Nicky!  It’s a mistake.  I thought—­my sister—­It got so late—­you wouldn’t go.  Go now!  The key—­turning—­Nervous—­silly—­mistake.  Go—­”

He laughed, something exhilarant in his boiling over, and even in her sudden terror of him she looked at his bare teeth and felt the unnice beauty of the storm.

“Nicky,” she half cried, “don’t be—­foolish!  I—­”

And then he struck her across the lip so that her teeth cut in again.

“There is some one coming here to-night,” he said, with his smile still very white.

She sat on the couch, trying to bravado down her trembling.

“And what if there is?  He’ll beat you up for this!  You fool!  I’ve tried to explain a dozen times.  You know, or if you don’t you ought to, that there’s a—­friend.  A traveling salesman.  Automobile accessories.  Long trips, but good money.  Good money.  And here you walk in a few weeks ago and expect to find the way clear!  Good boy, you like some one to go ahead of you with a snow cleaner, don’t you?  Yes, there’s some one due in here off his trip to-night.  What’s the use trying to tell Nicky-boy with his hot head.  He’s got a hot head, too.  Go, and let me clear the way for you, Nicky.  For good if you say the word.  But I have to know where I’m at.  Every girl does if she wants to keep her body and soul together.  You don’t let me know where I stand.  You know you’ve got me around your little finger for the saying, but you don’t say.  Only go now, Nicky-boy.  For God’s sake, it’s five minutes to eleven and he’s due in on that ten-forty-five.  Nicky-boy, go, and come back to me at six to-morrow night.  I’ll have the way clear then, for good.  Quit blinking at me like that, Nicky.  You scare me!  Quit!  When you come back to-morrow evening there won’t be any more going home for Josie’s Nicky-boy.  Nicky, go now.  He’s hotheaded, too.  Quit blinking, Nicky—­for God’s sake—­Nicky—­”