She had intellect and an uncanny insight into men’s minds. It was not merely the beauty of the flesh either. There was a lure of mystery about Demeter. Still, there would be Demeter Cass! Would that make up for the lack of a real Christmas? Demeter with her hair like ripe wheat, her strange sea-green eyes under long golden lashes, and her red, red lips.

There would be luxury of eating and drinking and apparel, but it would not be Christmas, not real Christmas. There would be excitement and hilarity there would be amusement and a wealth of unique variety. But it didn’t suit Christmas, not in the least, not his inherited traditional Christmas. He was on his way to one now-a colossal house party in a fabulously expensive home on a vast estate ninety miles or so away. Oh, of course he had friends, and there were plenty of social engagements. Christmas didn’t seem like Christmas in an apartment hotel with only a city office for change. Christmas was a home day, and his family was all gone except a married sister who was touring Europe on her wedding trip. Not that Christmas meant so much to him anymore. He was still young enough to thrill over snow. Until even their young ardor was baffled by the increasingly bitter cold and the pitiless slant of whiteness that shut them from one another, and one by one they drifted from a suddenly frightening world, into the warmth and brightness of the fireside, to careful mothers who kissed their little cold wet faces, dried their smarting wrists, and folded them in warm garments with comforting embrace.Īlan Monteith drove into the first of the storm, wending his way between the largest of the lazy flakes, a bit thrilled at the thought of snow for Christmas. Before noon it became apparent that the intention was something more than just a winter snowstorm.Ĭhildren came rollicking out with their sleds, bundled in bright scarlet or green or blue, reveling in the snow, shouting to one another with muted voices that seemed amazingly to have lost their resonance, deadened in this strange, padded atmosphere. The wind rose gradually, drifting the falling particles into solid walls of stubborn whiteness. In just no time at all the ground was covered, and then the snow settled down to business, imperceptibly changing into fine stinging grains, slanting down with swift, accelerated measure, beating into every crack and cranny, packing firmly into an impenetrable mass. They soon grew larger, swirling fantastically, like children holding hands, chasing one another through a fairy world, now this way now that, whimsically, with no regular meter or rhythm.

They began in the early morning, shortly after seven, large feathery flakes sliding down as if they were only playing. It was the day before Christmas, and it had been snowing hard all day.

Partners by Grace Livingston Hill