SILENT SNOW, SECRET SNOW 
by Conrad Aiken 

Copyright 1932 by Conrad Aiken.

I 

JUST why it should have happened, or why it should 
have happened just when it did, he could not, of 
course, possibly have said; nor perhaps would it even 
have occurred to him to ask. The thing was above all a 
secret, something to be preciously concealed from Mother 
and Father; and to that very fact it owed an enormous part 
of its deliciousness. It was like a peculiarly beautiful trin- 
ket to be carried unmentioned in one's trouser-pocket, a 
rare stamp, an old coin, a few tiny gold links found trodden 
out of shape on the path in the park, a pebble of carnelian, a 
sea shell distinguishable from all others by an unusual spot 
or stripe, and, as if it were any one of these, he carried 
around with him everywhere a warm and persistent and 
increasingly beautiful sense of possession. Nor was it only 
a sense of possession it was also a sense of protection. 
It was as if, in some delightful way, his secret gave him a 
fortress, a wall behind which he could retreat into heavenly 
seclusion. This was almost the first thing he had noticed 
about it apart from the oddness of the thing itself and 
it was this that now again, for the fiftieth time, occurred 
to him, as he sat in the little schoolroom. It was the half 
hour for geography. Miss Buell was revolving with one 
finger, slowly, a huge terrestrial globe which had been 
placed on her desk. The green and yellow continents 
passed and repassed, questions were asked and answered, 
and now the little girl in front of him, Deirdre, who had a 
funny little constellation of freckles on the back of her 
neck, exactly like the Big Dipper, was standing up and 
telling Miss Buell that the equator was the line that ran 
round the middle. 

Miss Buell's face, which was old and greyish and kindly, 
with grey stiff curls beside the cheeks, and eyes that swam 
very brightly, like little minnows, behind thick glasses, 
wrinkled itself into a complication of amusements. 

"Ah! I see. The earth is wearing a belt, or a sash. Or 
someone drew a line round it!" 

"Oh no not that I mean " 

In the general laughter, he did not share, or only a very 
little. He was thinking about the Arctic and Antarctic 
regions, which of course, on the globe, were white. Miss 
Buell was now telling them about the tropics, the jungles, 
the steamy heat of equatorial swamps, where the birds 
and butterflies, and even the snakes, were like living jewels. 
As he listened to these things, he was already, with a 
pleasant sense of half-effort, putting his secret between 
himself and the words. Was it really an effort at all? For 
effort implied something voluntary, and perhaps even 
something one did not especially want; whereas this was 
distinctly pleasant, and came almost of its own accord. 
All he needed to do was to think of that morning, the first 
one, and then of all the others 

But it was all so absurdly simple! It had amounted to 
so little. It was nothing, just an idea and just why it 
should have become so wonderful, so permanent, was a 
mystery a very pleasant one, to be sure, but also, in an 
amusing way, foolish. However, without ceasing to listen 
to Miss Buell, who had now moved up to the north tem- 
perate zones, he deliberately invited his memory of the 
first morning. It was only a moment or two after he had 
waked up or perhaps the moment itself. But was there, 
to be exact, an exact moment? Was one awake all at once? 
or was it gradual? Anyway, it was after he had stretched 
a lazy hand up towards the headrail, and yawned, and 
then relaxed again among his warm covers, all the more 
grateful on a December morning, that the thing had 
happened. Suddenly, for no reason, he had thought of the 
postman, he remembered the postman. Perhaps there was 
nothing so odd in that. After all, he heard the postman 
almost every morning in his life his heavy boots could be 
heard clumping round the corner at the top of the little 
cobbled hill-street, and then, progressively nearer, pro- 
gressively louder, the double knock at each door, the cross- 
ings and re-crossings of the street, till finally the clumsy 
steps came stumbling across to the very door, and the 
tremendous knock came which shook the house itself. 

(Miss Buell was saying "Vast wheat-growing areas in 
North America and Siberia." 

Deirdre had for the moment placed her left hand across 
the back of her neck.) 

But on this particular morning, the first morning, as he 
lay there with his eyes closed, he had for some reason 
waited for the postman. He wanted to hear him come 
round the corner. And that was precisely the joke he 
never did. He never came. He never had come round the 
corner again. For when at last the steps were heard, they 
had already, he was quite sure, come a little down the hill, 
to the first house; and even so, the steps were curiously 
different they were softer, they had a new secrecy about 
them, they were muffled and indistinct; and while the 
rhythm of them was the same, it now said a new thing 
it said peace, it said remoteness, it said cold, it said sleep. 
And he had understood the situation at once nothing 
could have seemed simpler there had been snow in the 
night, such as all winter he had been longing for; and it 
was this which had rendered the postman's first footsteps 
inaudible, and the later ones faint. Of course! How lovely! 
And even now it must be snowing it was going to be a 
snowy day the long white ragged lines were drifting and 
sifting across the street, across the faces of the old houses, 
whispering and hushing, making little triangles of white in 
the corners between cobblestones, seething a little when 
the wind blew them over the ground to a drifted corner; 
and so it would be all day, getting deeper and deeper and 
silenter and silenter. 

(Miss Buell was saying "Land of perpetual snow.") 

All this time, of course (while he lay in bed), he had kept 
his eyes closed, listening to the nearer progress of the post- 
man, the muffled footsteps thumping and slipping on the 
snow-sheathed cobbles; and all the other sounds the 
double knocks, a frosty far-off voice or two, a bell ringing 
thinly and softly as if under a sheet of ice had the same 
slightly abstracted quality, as if removed by one degree 
from actuality as if everything in the world had been 
insulated by snow. But when at last, pleased, he opened 
his eyes, and turned them towards the window, to see for 
himself this long-desired and now so clearly imagined 
miracle what he saw instead was brilliant sunlight on a 
roof; and when, astonished, he jumped out of bed and 
stared down into the street, expecting to see the cobbles 
obliterated by the snow, he saw nothing but the bare bright 
cobbles themselves. 

Queer, the effect this extraordinary surprise had had 
upon him all the following morning he had kept with 
him a sense as of snow falling about him, a secret screen 
of new snow between himself and the world. If he had not 
dreamed such a thing and how could he have dreamed it 
while awake? how else could one explain it? In any case, 
the delusion had been so vivid as to affect his entire be- 
haviour. He could not now remember whether it was on 
the first or the second morning or was it even the third? 
that his mother had drawn attention to some oddness in 
his manner. 

"But my darling " she had said at the breakfast 
table "what has come over you? You don't seem to be 
listening. ..." 

And how often that very thing had happened since! 

(Miss Buell was now asking if anyone knew the differ- 
ence between the North Pole and the Magnetic Pole. 
Deirdre was holding up her flickering brown hand, and 
he could see the four white dimples that marked the 
knuckles.) 

Perhaps it hadn't been either the second or third morn- 
ing or even the fourth or fifth. How could he be sure? 
How could he be sure just when the delicious progress had 
become clear? Just when it had really begun? The inter- 
vals weren't very precise. . . . All he now knew was, 
that at some point or other perhaps the second day, per- 
haps the sixth he had noticed that the presence of the 
snow was a little more insistent, the sound of it clearer; 
and, conversely, the sound of the postman's footsteps more 
indistinct. Not only could he not hear the steps come 
round the corner, he could not even hear them at the first 
house. It was below the first house that he heard them; 
and then, a few days later, it was below the second house 
that he heard them; and a few days later again, below the 
third. Gradually, gradually, the snow was becoming 
heavier, the sound of its seething louder, the cobblestones 
more and more muffled. When he found, each morning, 
on going to the window, after the ritual of listening, that 
the roofs and cobbles were as bare as ever, it made no 
difference. This was, after all, only what he had expected. 
It was even what pleased him, what rewarded him: the 
thing was his own, belonged to no one else. No one else 
knew about it, not even his mother and father. There, 
outside, were the bare cobbles; and here, inside, was the 
snow. Snow growing heavier each day, muffling the world, 
hiding the ugly, and deadening increasingly above all 
the steps of the postman. 

"But my darling " she had said at the luncheon 
table "what has come over you? You don't seem to 
listen when people speak to you. That's the third time I've 
asked you to pass your plate. . . ." 

How was one to explain this to Mother? or to Father? 
There was, of course, nothing to be done about it: nothing. 
All one could do was to laugh embarrassedly, pretend to 
be a little ashamed, apologize, and take a sudden and 
somewhat disingenuous interest in what was being done 
or said. The cat had stayed out all night. He had a curi- 
ous swelling on his left cheek perhaps somebody had 
kicked him, or a stone had struck him. Mrs. Kempton 
was or was not coming to tea. The house was going to be 
house cleaned, or "turned out," on Wednesday instead of 
Friday. A new lamp was provided for his evening work 
perhaps it was eyestrain which accounted for this new and 
so peculiar vagueness of his Mother was looking at him 
with amusement as she said this, but with something else 
as well. A new lamp? A new lamp. Yes Mother, No 
Mother, Yes Mother. School is going very well. The 
geometry is very easy. The history is very dull. The 
geography is very interesting particularly when it takes 
one to the North Pole. Why the North Pole? Oh, well, it 
would be fun to be an explorer. Another Peary or Scott or 
Shackleton. And then abruptly he found his interest in 
the talk at an end, stared at the pudding on his plate, 
listened, waited, and began once more ah how heavenly, 
too, the first beginnings to hear or feel for could he 
actually hear it? the silent snow, the secret snow. 

(Miss Buell was telling them about the search for the 
Northwest Passage, about Hendrik Hudson, the Half 
Moon.) 

This had been, indeed, the only distressing feature of the 
new experience: the fact that it so increasingly had brought 
him into a kind of mute misunderstanding, or even con- 
flict, with his father and mother. It was as if he were trying 
to lead a double life. On the one hand he had to be Paul 
Hasleman, and keep up the appearance of being that per- 
son dress, wash, and answer intelligently when spoken 
to; on the other, he had to explore this new world which 
had been opened to him. Nor could there be the slightest 
doubt not the slightest that the new world was the 
profounder and more wonderful of the two. It was ir- 
resistible. It was miraculous. Its beauty was simply 
beyond anything beyond speech as beyond thought 
utterly incommunicable. But how then, between the two 
worlds, of which he was thus constantly aware, was he to 
keep a balance? One must get up, one must go to break- 
fast, one must talk with Mother, go to school, do one's 
lessons and, in all this, try not to appear too much of a 
fool. But if all the while one was also trying to extract the 
full deliciousness of another and quite separate existence, 
one which could not easily (if at all) be spoken of how 
was one to manage? How was one to explain? Would it 
be safe to explain? Would it be absurd? Would it merely 
mean that he would get into some obscure kind of trouble? 
These thoughts came and went, came and went, as 
softly and secretly as the snow; they were not precisely a 
disturbance, perhaps they were even a pleasure; he liked 
to have them; their presence was something almost pal- 
pable, something he could stroke with his hand, without 
closing his eyes, and without ceasing to see Miss Buell 
and the school-room and the globe and the freckles on 
Deirdre's neck; nevertheless he did in a sense cease to see, 
or to see the obvious external world, and substituted for this 
vision the vision of snow, the sound of snow, and the slow, 
almost soundless, approach of the postman. Yesterday, it 
had been only at the sixth house that the postman had 
become audible; the snow was much deeper now, it was 
falling more swiftly and heavily, the sound of its seething 
was more distinct, more soothing, more persistent. And 
this morning, it had been as nearly as he could figure 
just above the seventh house perhaps only a step or two 
above: at most, he had heard two or three footsteps before 
the knock had sounded. . . . And with each such narrow- 
ing of the sphere, each nearer approach of the limit at 
which the postman was first audible, it was odd how 
sharply was increased the amount of illusion which had 
to be carried into the ordinary business of daily life. Each 
day, it was harder to get out of bed, to go to the window, 
to look out at the as always perfectly empty and snow- 
less street. Each day it was more difficult to go through 
the perfunctory motions of greeting Mother and Father at 
breakfast, to reply to their questions, to put his books to- 
gether and go to school. And at school, how extraordinar- 
ily hard to conduct with success simultaneously the public 
life and the life that was secret. There were times when he 
longed positively ached to tell everyone about it to 
burst out with it only to be checked almost at once by a 
far-off feeling as of some faint absurdity which was in- 
herent in it but was it absurd? and more importantly 
by a sense of mysterious power in his very secrecy. Yes: 
it must be kept secret. That, more and more, became clear. 
At whatever cost to himself, whatever pain to others 

(Miss Buell looked straight at him, smiling, and said, 
"Perhaps we'll ask Paul. Pm sure Paul will come out of 
his day-dream long enough to be able to tell us. Won't 
you, Paul." He rose slowly from his chair, resting one 
hand on the brightly varnished desk, and deliberately 
stared through the snow towards the blackboard. It was 
an effort, but it was amusing to make it. "Yes," he said 
slowly, "it was what we now call the Hudson River. This 
he thought to be the Northwest Passage. He was dis- 
appointed." He sat down again, and as he did so Deirdre 
half turned in her chair and gave him a shy smile, of 
approval and admiration.) 

At whatever pain to others. 

This part of it was very puzzling, very puzzling. Mother 
was very nice, and so was Father. Yes, that was all true 
enough. He wanted to be nice to them, to tell them every- 
thing and yet, was it really wrong of him to want to have 
a secret place of his own? 

At bedtime, the night before, Mother had said, "If this 
goes on, my lad, we'll have to see a doctor, we will! We 
can't have our boy " But what was it she had said? 
" Live in another world " ? " Live so far away " ? The word 
"far" had been in it, he was sure, and then Mother had 
taken up a magazine again and laughed a little, but with 
an expression which wasn't mirthful. He had felt sorry 
for her. . . . 

The bell rang for dismissal. The sound came to him 
through long curved parallels of falling snow. He saw 
Deirdre rise, and had himself risen almost as soon but 
not quite as soon as she. 

II 

On the walk homeward, which was timeless, it pleased 
him to see through the accompaniment, or counterpoint, of 
snow, the items of mere externality on his way. There 
were many kinds of brick in the sidewalks, and laid in 
many kinds of pattern. The garden walls too were various, 
some of wooden palings, some of plaster, some of stone. 
Twigs of bushes leaned over the walls: the little hard green 
winter-buds of lilac, on grey stems, sheathed and fat; 
other branches very thin and fine and black and desiccated. 
Dirty sparrows huddled in the bushes, as dull in colour 
as dead fruit left in leafless trees. A single starling creaked 
on a weather vane. In the gutter, beside a drain, was a 
scrap of torn and dirty newspaper, caught in a little delta 
of filth: the word ECZEMA appeared in large capitals, and 
below it was a letter from Mrs. Amelia D. Cravath, 2100 
Pine Street, Fort Worth, Texas, to the effect that after 
being a sufferer for years she had been cured by Caley's 
Ointment. In the little delta, beside the fan-shaped and 
deeply runnelled continent of brown mud, were lost twigs, 
descended from their parent trees, dead matches, a rusty 
horse-chestnut burr, a small concentration of sparkling 
gravel on the lip of the sewer, a fragment of egg-shell, a 
streak of yellow sawdust which had been wet and now was 
dry and congealed, a brown pebble, and a broken feather. 
Further on was a cement sidewalk, ruled into geometrical 
parallelograms, with a brass inlay at one end commemo- 
rating the contractors who had laid it, and, halfway across, 
an irregular and random series of dog-tracks, immortalized 
in synthetic stone. He knew these well, and always stepped 
on them; to cover the little hollows with his own foot had 
always been a queer pleasure; today he did it once more, 
but perfunctorily and detachedly, all the while thinking 
of something else. That was a dog, a long time ago, who 
had made a mistake and walked on the cement while it 
was still wet. He had probably wagged his tail, but that 
hadn't been recorded. Now, Paul Hasleman, aged twelve, 
on his way home from school, crossed the same river, which 
in the meantime had frozen into rock. Homeward through 
the snow, the snow falling in bright sunshine. Homeward? 

Then came the gateway with the two posts surmounted 
by egg-shaped stones which had been cunningly balanced 
on their ends, as if by Columbus, and mortared in the very 
act of balance: a source of perpetual wonder. On the brick 
wall just beyond, the letter H had been stenciled, pre- 
sumably for some purpose. H? H. 

The green hydrant, with a little green-painted chain 
attached to the brass screw-cap. 

The elm tree, with the great grey wound in the bark, kid- 
ney-shaped, into which he always put his hand to feel 
the cold but living wood. The injury, he had been sure, 
was due to the gnawings of a tethered horse. But now it 
deserved only a passing palm, a merely tolerant eye. There 
were more important things. Miracles. Beyond the 
thoughts of trees, mere elms. Beyond the thoughts of 
sidewalks, mere stone, mere brick, mere cement. Beyond 
the thoughts even of his own shoes, which trod these side- 
walks obediently, bearing a burden far above of elab- 
orate mystery. He watched them. They were not very 
well polished; he had neglected them, for a very good 
reason: they were one of the many parts of the increasing 
difficulty of the daily return to daily life, the morning 
struggle. To get up, having at last opened one's eyes, to 
go to the window, and discover no snow, to wash, to dress, 
to descend the curving stairs to breakfast 

At whatever pain to others, nevertheless, one must per- 
severe in severance, since the incommunicability of the 
experience demanded it. It was desirable of course to be 
kind to Mother and Father, especially as they seemed to 
be worried, but it was also desirable to be resolute. If 
they should decide as appeared likely to consult the 
doctor, Doctor Howells, and have Paul inspected, his 
heart listened to through a kind of dictaphone, his lungs, 
his stomach well, that was all right. He would go 
through with it. He would give them answer for question, 
too perhaps such answers as they hadn't expected? No. 
That would never do. For the secret world must, at all 
costs, be preserved. 

The bird-house in the apple-tree was empty it was the 
wrong time of year for wrens. The little round black door 
had lost its pleasure. The wrens were enjoying other 
houses, other nests, remoter trees. But this too was a 
notion which he only vaguely and grazingly entertained 
as if, for the moment, he merely touched an edge of it; 
there was something further on, which was already assum- 
ing a sharper importance; something which already teased 
at the corners of his eyes, teasing also at the corner of his 
mind. It was funny to think that he so wanted this, so 
awaited it and yet found himself enjoying this momen- 
tary dalliance with the bird-house, as if for a quite deliber- 
ate postponement and enhancement of the approaching 
pleasure. He was aware of his delay, of his smiling and 
detached and now almost uncomprehending gaze at the 
little bird-house; he knew what he was going to look at 
next: it was his own little cobbled hill-street, his own 
house, the little river at the bottom of the hill, the grocer's 
shop with the cardboard man in the window and now, 
thinking of all this, he turned his head, still smiling, and 
looking quickly right and left through the snow-laden 
sunlight. 

And the mist of snow, as he had foreseen, was still on 
it a ghost of snow falling in the bright sunlight, softly 
and steadily floating and turning and pausing, soundlessly 
meeting the snow that covered, as with a transparent 
mirage, the bare bright cobbles. He loved it he stood 
still and loved it. Its beauty was paralyzing beyond all 
words, all experience, all dream. No fairy-story he had 
ever read could be compared with it none had ever given 
him this extraordinary combination of ethereal loveliness 
with a something else, unnameable, which was just faintly 
and deliciously terrifying. What was this thing? As he 
thought of it, he looked upward toward his own bedroom 
window, which was open and it was as if he looked 
straight into the room and saw himself lying half awake 
in his bed. There he was at this very instant he was still 
perhaps actually there more truly there than standing 
here at the edge of the cobbled hill-street, with one hand 
lifted to shade his eyes against the snow-sun. Had he 
indeed ever left his room, in all this time? since that very 
first morning? Was the whole progress still being enacted 
there, was it still the same morning, and himself not yet 
wholly awake? And even now, had the postman not yet 
come round the corner? . . . 

This idea amused him, and automatically, as he thought 
of it, he turned his head and looked toward the top of the 
hill. There was, of course, nothing there nothing and no 
one. The street was empty and quiet. And all the more 
because of its emptiness it occurred to him to count the 
houses a thing which, oddly enough, he hadn't before 
thought of doing. Of course, he had known there weren't 
many many, that is, on his own side of the street, which 
were the ones that figured in the postman's progress but 
nevertheless it came to him as something of a shock to find 
that there were precisely six, above his own house his 
own house was the seventh. 

Six! 

Astonished, he looked at his own house looked at the 
door, on which was the number thirteen and then real- 
ized that the whole thing was exactly and logically and 
absurdly what he ought to have known. Just the same, 
the realization gave him abruptly, and even a little fright- 
eningly, a sense of hurry. He was being hurried he was 
being rushed. For he knit his brows he couldn't be 
mistaken it was just above the seventh house, his own 
house, that the postman had first been audible this very 
morning. But in that case in that case did it mean that 
tomorrow he would hear nothing? The knock he had heard 
must have been the knock of their own door. Did it mean 
and this was an idea which gave him a really extraordi- 
nary feeling of surprise that he would never hear the 
postman again? that tomorrow morning the postman 
would already have passed the house, in a snow by then 
so deep as to render his footsteps completely inaudible? 
That he would have made his approach down the snow- 
filled street so soundlessly, so secretly, that he, Paul 
Hasleman, there lying in bed, would not have waked in 
time, or, waking, would have heard nothing? 

But how could that be? Unless even the knocker should 
be muffled in the snow frozen tight, perhaps? . . . But 
in that case 

A vague feeling of disappointment came over him; a 
vague sadness, as if he felt himself deprived of something 
which he had long looked forward to, something much 
prized. After all this, all this beautiful progress, the slow 
delicious advance of the postman through the silent and 
secret snow, the knock creeping closer each day, and the 
footsteps nearer, the audible compass of the world thus 
daily narrowed, narrowed, narrowed, as the snow sooth- 
ingly and beautifully encroached and deepened, after all 
this, was he to be defrauded of the one thing he had so 
wanted to be able to count, as it were, the last two or 
three solemn footsteps, as they finally approached his own 
door? Was it all going to happen, at the end, so suddenly? 
or indeed, had it already happened? with no slow and sub- 
tle.gradations of menace, in which he could luxuriate? 

He gazed upward again, toward his own window which 
flashed in the sun: and this time almost with a feeling that 
it would be better if he were still in bed, in that room; for in 
that case this must still be the first morning, and there 
would be six more mornings to come or, for that matter, 
seven or eight or nine how could he be sure? or even 
more. 

III 

After supper, the inquisition began. He stood before 
the doctor, under the lamp, and submitted silently to the 
usual thumpings and tappings. 

"Now will you please say 'Ah!'?" 

"Ah!" 

"Now again please, if you don't mind." 

"Ah." 

"Say it slowly, and hold it if you can " 

"Ah-h-h-h-h-h " 

"Good." 

How silly all this was. As if it had anything to do with 
his throat! Or his heart or lungs ! 

Relaxing his mouth, of which the corners, after all this 
absurd stretching, felt uncomfortable, he avoided the doc- 
tor's eyes, and stared towards the fireplace, past his 
mother's feet (in grey slippers) which projected from the 
green chair, and his father's feet (in brown slippers) which 
stood neatly side by side on the hearth rug. 

"Hm. There is certainly nothing wrong there . . ." 

He felt the doctor's eyes fixed upon him, and, as if 
merely to be polite, returned the look, but with a feeling 
of justifiable evasiveness. 

"Now, young man, tell me, do you feel all right?" 

"Yes, sir, quite all right." 

"No headaches? no dizziness?" 

"No, I don't think so." 

"Let me see. Let's get a book, if you don't mind yes, 
thank you, that will do splendidly and now, Paul, if 
you'll just read it, holding it as you would normally hold 
it" 

He took the book and read: 

"And another praise have I to tell for this the city our 
mother, the gift of a great god, a glory of the land most 
high; the might of horses, the might of young horses, the 
might of the sea. . . . For thou, son of Cronus, our lord 
Poseidon, hast throned herein this pride, since in these 
roads first thou didst show forth the curb that cures 
the rage of steeds. And the shapely oar, apt to men's 
hands, hath a wondrous speed on the brine, following the 
hundred-footed Nereids. . . . O land that art praised 
above all lands, now is it for thee to make those bright 
praises seen in deeds." 

He stopped, tentatively, and lowered the heavy book. 

"No as I thought there is certainly no superficial 
sign of eye-strain." 

Silence thronged the room, and he was aware of the 
focused scrutiny of the three people who confronted 
him. . . . 

"We could have his eyes examined but I believe it is 
something else." 

"What could it be?" This was his father's voice. 

"It's only this curious absent-mindedness " This was 
his mother's voice. 

In the presence of the doctor, they both seemed irritat- 
ingly apologetic. 

" I believe it is something else. Now Paul I would like 
very much to ask you a question or two. You will answer 
them, won't you you know I'm an old, old friend of 
yours, eh? That's right! . . ." 

His back was thumped twice by the doctor's fat fist, 
then the doctor was grinning at him with false amiability, 
while with one finger-nail he was scratching the top button 
of his waistcoat. Beyond the doctor's shoulder was the 
fire, the fingers of flame making light prestidigitation 
against the sooty fireback, the soft sound of their random 
flutter the only sound. 

"I would like to know is there anything that worries 
you?" 

The doctor was again smiling, his eyelids low against the 
little black pupils, in each of which was a tiny white bead 
of light. Why answer him? why answer him at all? "At 
whatever pain to others" but it was all a nuisance, this 
necessity for resistance, this necessity for attention: it 
was as if one had been stood up on a brilliantly lighted 
stage, under a great round blaze of spotlight; as if one were 
merely a trained seal, or a performing dog, or a fish, dipped 
out of an aquarium and held up by the tail. It would serve 
them right if he were merely to bark or growl. And mean- 
while, to miss these last few precious hours, these hours of 
which each minute was more beautiful than the last, more 
menacing ? He still looked, as if from a great distance, 
at the beads of light in the doctor's eyes, at the fixed false 
smile, and then, beyond, once more at his mother's slip- 
pers, his father's slippers, the soft flutter of the fire. Even 
here, even amongst these hostile presences, and in this 
arranged light, he could see the snow, he could hear it it 
was in the corners of the room, where the shadow was 
deepest, under the sofa, behind the half-opened door which 
led to the dining-room. It was gentler here, softer, its 
seethe the quietest of whispers, as if, in deference to a 
drawing-room, it had quite deliberately put on its "man- 
ners"; it kept itself out of sight, obliterated itself, but 
distinctly with an air of saying, "Ah, but just waiti Wait 
till we are alone together! Then I will begin to tell you 
something new! Something white! something cold! some- 
thing sleepy! something of cease, and peace, and the long 
bright curve of space! Tell them to go away. Banish them. 
Refuse to speak. Leave them, go upstairs to your room, 
turn out the light and get into bed I will go with you, 
I will be waiting for you, I will tell you a better story than 
Little Kay of the Skates, or The Snow Ghost I will 
surround your bed, I will close the windows, pile a deep 
drift against the door, so that none will ever again be able 
to enter. Speak to them! . . ." It seemed as if the little 
hissing voice came from a slow white spiral of falling 
flakes in the corner by the front window but he could 
not be sure. He felt himself smiling, then, and said to the 
doctor, but without looking at him, looking beyond him 
still 

"Oh no, I think not" 

"But are you sure, my boy?" 

His father's voice came softly and coldly then the 
familiar voice of silken warning. . . . 

"You needn't answer at once, Paul remember we're 
trying to help you think it over and be quite sure, won't 
you?" 

He felt himself smiling again, at the notion of being 
quite sure. What a joke! As if he weren't so sure that re- 
assurance was no longer necessary, and all this cross- 
examination a ridiculous farce, a grotesque parody! What 
could they know about it? these gross intelligences, these 
humdrum minds so bound to the usual, the ordinary? 
Impossible to tell them about it! Why, even now, even 
now, with the proof so abundant, so formidable, so im- 
minent, so appallingly present here in this very room, 
could they believe it? could even his mother believe it? 
No it was only too plain that if anything were said about 
it, the merest hint given, they would be incredulous 
they would laugh they would say " absurd!" think 
things about him which weren't true. . . . 

"Why no, I'm not worried why should I be?" 

He looked then straight at the doctor's low-lidded eyes, 
looked from one of them to the other, from one bead of 
light to the other, and gave a little laugh. 

The doctor seemed to be disconcerted by this. He drew 
back in his chair, resting a fat white hand on either knee. 
The smile faded slowly from his face. 

"Well, Paul!" he said, and paused gravely, "I'm afraid 
you don't take this quite seriously enough. I think you 
perhaps don't quite realize don't quite realize " He 
took a deep quick breath, and turned, as if helplessly, at a 
loss for words, to the others. But Mother and Father were 
both silent no help was forthcoming. 

"You must surely know, be aware, that you have not 
been quite yourself, of late? don't you know that? . . ." 

It was amusing to watch the doctor's renewed attempt 
at a smile, a queer disorganized look, as of confidential 
embarrassment. 

"I feel all right, sir," he said, and again gave the little 
laugh. 

"And we're trying to help you." The doctor's tone 
sharpened. 

"Yes sir, I know. But why? I'm all right. I'm just 
thinking, that's all." 

His mother made a quick movement forward, resting a 
hand on the back of the doctor's chair. 

"Thinking?" she said. "But my dear, about what?" 

This was a direct challenge and would have to be 
directly met. But before he met it, he looked again into the 
corner by the door, as if for reassurance. He smiled again 
at what he saw, at what he heard. The little spiral was 
still there, still softly whirling, like the ghost of a white 
kitten chasing the ghost of a white tail, and making as 
it did so the faintest of whispers. It was all right! If only 
he could remain firm, everything was going to be all 
right. 

"Oh, about anything, about nothing, you know the 
way you do!" 

"You mean day-dreaming?" 

"Oh, no thinking!" 

"But thinking about what?" 

"Anything." 

He laughed a third time but this time, happening to 
glance upward towards his mother's face, he was appalled 
at the effect his laughter seemed to have upon her. Her 
mouth had opened in an expression of horror. . . . This 
was too bad! Unfortunate! He had known it would cause 
pain, of course but he hadn't expected it to be quite so 
bad as this. Perhaps perhaps if he just gave them a tiny 
gleaming hint ? 

"About the snow," he said. 

"What on earth!" This was his father's voice. The 
brown slippers came a step nearer on the hearth-rug. 

"But my dear, what do you mean!" This was his 
mother's voice. 

The doctor merely stared. 

"Just snow, that's all. I like to think about it." 

"Tell us about it, my boy." 

"But that's all it is. There's nothing to tell. You know 
what snow is?" 

This he said almost angrily, for he felt that they were 
trying to corner him. He turned sideways so as no longer 
to face the doctor, and the better to see the inch of black- 
ness between the window-sill and the lowered curtain, 
the cold inch of beckoning and delicious night. At once he 
felt better, more assured. 

"Mother can I go to bed, now, please? I've got a head- 
ache." 

"But I thought you said " 

"It's just come. It's all these questions ! Can I, 
mother?" 

" You can go as soon as the doctor has finished." 

"Don't you think this thing ought to be gone into thor- 
oughly, and now?" This was Father's voice. The brown 
slippers again came a step nearer, the voice was the well- 
known "punishment" voice, resonant and cruel. 

"Oh, what's the use, Norman " 

Quite suddenly, everyone was silent. And without pre- 
cisely facing them, nevertheless he was aware that all three 
of them were watching him with an extraordinary inten- 
sity staring hard at him as if he had done something 
monstrous, or was himself some kind of monster. He 
could hear the soft irregular flutter of the flames; the cluck- 
click-cluck-click of the clock; far and faint, two sudden 
spurts of laughter from the kitchen, as quickly cut off as 
begun; a murmur of water in the pipes; and then, the 
silence seemed to deepen, to spread out, to become world- 
long and worldwide, to become timeless and shapeless, and 
to center inevitably and rightly, with a slow and sleepy 
but enormous concentration of all power, on the beginning 
of a new sound. What this new sound was going to be, he 
knew perfectly well. It might begin with a hiss, but it 
would end with a roar there was no time to lose he must 
escape. It mustn't happen here 

Without another word, he turned and ran up the stairs. 

IV 

Not a moment too soon. The darkness was coming in 
long white waves. A prolonged sibilance filled the night 
a great seamless seethe of wild influence went abruptly 
across it a cold low humming shook the windows. He 
shut the door and flung off his clothes in the dark. The 
bare black floor was like a little raft tossed in waves of 
snow, almost overwhelmed, washed under whitely, up 
again, smothered in curled billows of feather. The snow 
was laughing: it spoke from all sides at once: it pressed 
closer to him as he ran and jumped exulting into his bed. 

"Listen to us!" it said. "Listen! We have come to tell 
you the story we told you about. You remember? Lie 
down. Shut your eyes, now you will no longer see 
much in this white darkness who could see, or want to 
see? We will take the place of everything. . . . Listen " 

A beautiful varying dance of snow began at the front of 
the room, came forward and then retreated, flattened out 
toward the floor, then rose fountain-like to the ceiling, 
swayed, recruited itself from a new stream of flakes which 
poured laughing in through the humming window, ad- 
vanced again, lifted long white arms. It said peace, it said 
remoteness, it said cold it said 

But then a gash of horrible Hght fell brutally across the 
room from the opening door the snow drew back hiss- 
ing something alien had come into the room something 
hostile. This thing rushed at him, clutched at him, shook 
him and he was not merely horrified, he was filled with 
such a loathing as he had never known. What was this? 
this cruel disturbance? this act of anger and hate? It was 
as if he had to reach up a hand toward another world for 
any understanding of it, an effort of which he was only 
barely capable. But of that other world he still remem- 
bered just enough to know the exorcising words. They tore 
themselves from his other life suddenly 

"Mother! Mother! Go away! I hate you!" 

And with that effort, everything was solved, everything 
became all right: the seamless hiss advanced once more, the 
long white wavering lines rose and fell like enormous whis- 
pering sea-waves, the whisper becoming louder, the 
laughter more numerous. 

"Listen!" it said. "We'll tell you the last, the most 
beautiful and secret story shut your eyes it is a very 
small story a story that gets smaller and smaller it 
comes inward instead of opening like a flower it is a 
flower becoming a seed a little cold seed do you hear? 
we are leaning closer to you " 

The hiss was now becoming a roar the whole world was 
a vast moving screen of snow but even now it said peace, 
it said remoteness, it said cold, it said sleep.