It was
immediately after the New Year and the ground was covered with snow. He
looked out of the window of the train, and there was only the long line
of white country broken by the leafless trees and rail-fences and the
mansard-roofs and low cottages with their stoops, built up with earth to
keep them warm; and the sheds full of cattle; and here and there a
sawmill going hard, and factories pounding away and men in fur coats
driving the small Indian ponies; and the sharp calls of the men with the
sleigh bringing wood, or meat, or vegetables to market. He was by nature
a queer compound of Radical and Conservative, a victim of vision and
temperament. He was full of pride, yet fuller of humility of a real
kind. As he left Montreal he thought of Junia Shale, and he recalled the
day eleven years before when he had worn brass-toed boots, and he had
caught Junia in his arms and kissed her, and Denzil had had his accident.
Denzil had got unreasonably old since then; but Junia remained as she was
the joyous day when boyhood took on the first dreams of manhood.
Life was a queer thing, and he had not yet got his bearings in it. He
had a desire to reform the world and he wanted to be a great painter or
sculptor, or both; and he entered New York with a new sense developed.
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