at one of the Madison Street cafeterias. The excitement of the inquiry for Marcellus Clarke and then the search for Bagley had worn to baffled disappointment, and she was suffering a reaction from the unnatural stimulation of the occurrences at St. Florentin. She was feeling lonely, too; for, in spite of herself, it seemed strange not to be going to see her uncles and her aunts, to become again a close companion to her cousins, Julia and Bennet, who always took her about with them when she was in Chicago.
The cold snap which had ushered in the first week of the year had moderated to temperatures above freezing, and she found Astor Street quite cleared of snow; but a block farther east, the parkway beyond the Lake Shore Drive still was white with drift, and the lake was full of floe ice, glistening and billowing with the movement of the water. She halted, wearily, and half shut her eyes as she gazed toward the lake; she saw no longer the neighboring houses but only the ice and the water and she felt only the fresh wind which blew from the floes; it let her dream, for a moment, that the water before her was Huron and that she was on the beach near St. Florentin and that Barney might appear and she would hear his voice:
"Ah, j'y étais mousquetaire!"
She started at actually hearing a young man's voice calling her name: "Why, hello, Ethel Carew!"
Looking about, she discovered that a town car had stopped at the curb; the chauffeur remained in his seat, but a young man had got out and hailed her.
"Hello, Ira," she returned, recognizing one of Bennet's friends whom she liked and who often took her to dances and dinners.
