There were escorts for everybody and Selina and Mr. Jones started out alone. He guided her down the Harrisons' snow-laden front steps.

"Give me your hand. There's enough snow to be treacherous. Put your foot here, and here, and here."

Was there snow enough in truth on the steps to be treacherous? Selina concluded that perhaps there was but that his solicitude about it was excessive.

He led her down the even snowier flagging to the gate. "This drift has piled up since I went in half an hour ago. I don't know that I'd have brought you out in it if I'd realized."

Outside the gate he took her hand and placed it on his arm. "Right about," encouragingly. "Only the length of the block and you're there."

Then the out-streaming path of light from the Harrisons' doorway was left behind, and the dusk and the silently descending snow shut them in disquietingly and together.

Or was it, rather than the storm and dusk, the care of her by Tuttle which brought this disquieting sense of nearness and intimacy?

"This way—the snow's deeper near the fence. And yet don't stumble over the broken pavements."

And because of this increasing sense of disquiet, she began to talk hurriedly with the gay volubility of embarrassment. "You were wondering about Aunt Juanita and her questions about women? Mrs. Harrison says so many bothering things about women herself. I never feel certain I know just what she means."

Tuttle dropped her arm—they had gone possibly twenty steps—placed himself on the other side of her, lifted that hand and put it on his arm.

"The wind's veered more to this side. I can protect you better here. I rather suspect Mrs. Bruce is a shrewd enough woman, and we know Mrs. Harrison is a charming one. But what do we care after all, you and I, about their meanings?"

Was there just emphasis enough about that "you and I" to render it disquieting, too? Selina clung to her point and talked more volubly.

"Miss Pocahontas Boswell, that I met at your aunt's musicale, says things of the same sort as Mrs. Harrison, things that evidently Aunt Juanita means, too, things that won't let you alone afterward for wondering if they're true, and that hurt your self-respect to think they are true."

"Give me the end of that scarf," Tuttle referred to the little affair of crÊpe about her throat, a present not so long ago from Juliette, and which in the swirl of wind and snow was proving refractory. He caught the end, and halting her there in the snow and dusk again, they had gone perhaps thirty feet farther now, found its mate, and retied them. There was something like a woman in the skilful way he did it, and yet as he put her hand back on his arm for the third time, there was that which was not in the least like any woman, in the overlength of time he took in placing that hand where he wanted it. And there was that not in the least suggestive of any woman either, in the tiny pressure of reassurance he put upon those fingers as he left them.

And just what was it these manifestations from Tuttle meant?

Even in Selina's day a prude was a prude and no girl wanted to be one. On the one side, Mrs. Harrison and Miss 'Hontas Boswell and Aunt Juanita, possibly, too, would have said bluntly, "Look at the facts and try to find out what he means."

On the other hand, Mamma and Auntie, by their profound reticence, conveyed the idea, that once let a young man's attentions to a girl be so marked as to be a fact, and every instinct of maidenliness must erect itself in her mind, making blind alleys of all inquiry, wonder or surmise on her part, as to what such attentions mean.

And the facts in this case of Tuttle and Selina, were what? That a really prominent young man in the local little world of fashion, was devoting himself with pertinence and even pertinacity, to a pretty girl unknown in his world, an even quite pretty girl who unless she married, must find some way to earn a living and take care of herself.

The point might be held to be, were these attentions from Tuttle a passing thing, or sincere?

There was a good deal to make it reasonable that they were but passing. Tuttle was the son of Mr. Samuel Jones, wealthy and eminent citizen. True, some claimed that he was an eminent citizen last because he was a wealthy pork-packer first, but that may be permitted to pass. Tuttle was the son of this Mr. Samuel Jones by a second marriage. His mother in her public contributions to charity signed herself Alicia Tuttle Jones, which is all that needs be said on that score. And Tuttle, twenty-four years of age, neat, dapper, with sense enough of his own, was a beau, a great beau according to his aunt, a beau of such undoubted repute in his world, he even was dubbed the Oswald of it by those outside it and unkind to it, Preston Cannon and Culpepper, for example.

He also had the reputation according to his aunt once more, of being rather shrewdly unsusceptible. Or in other words, the words of Mr. Tate this time, used in defending him from the jocular side-thrusts of Preston and Culpepper, "he had a proper sense of his own value."

So much for Tuttle.

And the assets of this Selina, without a dollar of her own, or of her family's, shabbily established and obscure? Her assets, beyond the lure of nature through her youth and fairness were what? A sound young body. A nature plastic as yet to any mold through place and standing that might be hers. A nature appealingly innocent and unspoiled.

And these points on either side ascertained, what did these attentions from Tuttle to this pretty Selina mean? His manner of singling her out? Of separating her from whatever group of the moment she was in, and isolating her to himself? Or as now, of touching her fingers if ever so lightly, with a meaning in the touch that seemed to have a language of its own?

Selina being the outcome of Mamma's and Auntie's raising, might not ask herself these things. That tiny wedge of doubt first inserted by Miss 'Hontas Boswell, and again of late driven further by Mrs. Harrison, as to the soundness of the older ideas and traditions and customs, was a mere prick as yet, for the admission of some wonderment and some perturbation. She still was the product of her day and time and up-bringing and being this product, must close the doors of maidenliness and modesty as she knew them upon any such avenues to comprehension and honest understanding.

And so she chattered to Tuttle down the length of the snowy block, chattered volubly and prettily, fate having granted her this, that she did most things prettily, chattered gayly and volubly and withal a bit shyly, as cover to her greater embarrassment.

And so down the length of the snowy block also, he guided her, and in at her own gate, and to her door. And his solicitude, with its silent language, was all but actually caressing.

It was even that. He brought her to her door. A pause here, a space, and his hand left her arm where it had guided her up the steps and dropped, the breath of a touch only, the shadow of a hold—and yet, the blood leaped to it, and the heart stopped—as this Tuttle's hand sought and found hers at her side.

"And you changed the wearing of your hair, your pale, lovely hair that would be a poet's joy, as that little Juliette said of it to me, because I asked you?"

The touch of his hand on hers was gone, she was on the snow-wet step, he below, lifting his hat—correct Tuttle!—even in the swirling snow, bidding her hurry in and change her damp garments, saying good night, gone.

And she? Giving herself one moment to stand there, one pulsing, palpitating, trembling moment before she opened the door and went in to shabby, dreary, ordinary things, might not ask herself what this come upon her was? Nor what it meant? Nor what it portended? This warm, stealing, permeating, this vitalizing glow, this rush as of rosiness through her body?

Might not ask herself this, but being Selina Wistar, fruit of Mamma's and Auntie's rearing, must close the doors of a so-called nicety upon life and truth and nature, and deny to herself by all she was bred to hold modest and seemly, that it was so. For was she not product of her day and time and up-bringing?