Page:Willa Cather - The Song of the Lark.djvu/472



TTENBURG dismissed his taxicab at the 91st Street entrance of the Park and floundered across the drive through a wild spring snowstorm. When he reached the reservoir path he saw Thea ahead of him, walking rapidly against the wind. Except for that one figure, the path was deserted. A flock of gulls were hovering over the reservoir, seeming bewildered by the driving currents of snow that whirled above the black water and then disappeared with in it. When he had almost overtaken Thea, Fred called to her, and she turned and waited for him with her back to the wind. Her hair and furs were powdered with snowflakes, and she looked like some rich-pelted animal, with warm blood, that had run in out of the woods. Fred laughed as he took her hand.

"No use asking how you do. You surely need n't feel much anxiety about Friday, when you can look like this."

She moved close to the iron fence to make room for him beside her, and faced the wind again. "Oh, I 'm well enough, in so far as that goes. But I 'm not lucky about stage appearances. I 'm easily upset, and the most perverse things happen."

"What 's the matter? Do you still get nervous?"

"Of course I do. I don't mind nerves so much as getting numbed," Thea muttered, sheltering her face for a moment with her muff. "I 'm under a spell, you know, ed. It 's the thing I want to do that I can never do. Any other effects I can get easily enough."

"Yes, you get effects, and not only with your voice. That 's where you have it over all the rest of them; you 're as much at home on the stage as you were down in