The strong light of the vestibule lamp fell upon a handsome face, but it wore an unnatural flush.
There was an unsteadiness about his movements as he descended the marble steps, and he grasped the iron railing like one in danger of falling.

A waiter who had followed him to the door stood looking at him with a half-pitying, half-amused expression on his face as he went off, staggering through the blinding drift.
The storm was one of the fiercest of the season, and the air since midnight had become intensely cold.

The snow fell no longer in soft and filmy flakes, but in small hard pellets that cut like sand and sifted in through every crack and crevice against which the wild winds drove it.
The young man--boy, we might better say, for, he was only nineteen--moved off in the very teeth of this storm, the small granules of ice smiting him in the face and taking his breath.

The wind set itself against him with wide obstructing arms, and he reeled, staggered and plunged forward or from side to side, in a sort of blind desperation.
"Ugh!" he ejaculated, catching his breath and standing still as a fierce blast struck him.

Then, shaking himself like one trying to cast aside an impediment, he moved forward with quicker steps, and kept onward, for a distance of two or three blocks.