"Are you lost?" Wyatt asked.

The girl neither moved nor spoke, staring at the falling snow.

"Are you lost?"

"Look," she said, and waved a hand at the trees, the street, everything dressed in white, and more white falling from the sky.

He looked at the branches, now sugared and no longer empty. Now the trees and bushes, which had dropped their leaves weeks before, were outlined, and everywhere transformed by a simple trick of weather into new, pure things never seen before, a geometry of curves.

"Pardon me," she said. "I didn't mean to ignore you. It's unbelievably beautiful. Unbelievably." She shivered.

"It is beautiful," he said. "Aren't you cold?"

"Yes. I should have paid better attention." She wrapped her arms around herself. She was in shirtsleeves. Snow crowned her red hair, and more of it was settling on her shoulders, like epaulettes.

Why was she alone on Thanksgiving day? Who was she? She shivered, her speech was slurred, and she hadn't responded to the first thing he'd said -- signs of hypothermia. He touched her hand. It was icy. Why was she underdressed? He looked at her eyes. In the dim light they seemed all pupil, no iris. Drugs, probably. Cold was the first problem. Get her inside, warm her up, then figure out what to do next. "You're freezing," he said. "Come with me." He pointed toward the middle of the block. "My apartment is right there." It was one of two new buildings. All the others were old houses broken up into small apartments. They were in the middle of the student ghetto, north and east of campus, on the side of the hill.

"Oh, thank you, but I shouldn't."

"You're cold. Come with me." He touched her elbow and nodded in the direction of his building and turned. Looking back, he saw her follow. She set her feet in his tracks to keep the snow out of her shoes.

Inside the building, in the light, she looked drenched, and her skin was blue.

He opened the door to his apartment and let them in, then hung his dripping coat on the peg next to the jamb. She was a head shorter than he was, and he looked down at her hair, still filled with snow. He said "Brush that off," and went to the bedroom. He collected quilted long underwear, long wool socks, a tee shirt and flannel shirt, and sweatpants. In the closet he found the electric blanket he never used. Then he pulled an Army blanket off the bed. He returned to the living room.

"Put these on." He held out the pile of clothes. She stood where he'd left her. She hadn't brushed off the snow, and it had melted on her.

Her arms were crossed over her chest. She looked astonished. "Oh, no. I can't do that. I shouldn't be here at all." She shivered.

"You'll end up in the hospital if you don't let me help you." He pushed the clothing against her chest. She accepted it, with what appeared to be automatic courtesy. "Everything is clean." He pointed. "The bathroom is there. There's a fresh towel on the rack. Dry off before you put these on."

She went quietly. He put water to boil on the stove. He set the portable electric heater in the middle of the living-room floor.

When she returned, he smiled: she was short and thin and lost inside his clothes. The sleeves of his flannel shirt came to the tips of her fingers, and the bottoms of the long underwear and sweatpants were rolled several times to keep them above her feet. He pointed to the floor in the middle of the room. "Sit here," he said. "Close to the heater."

She arranged herself cross-legged on the floor, and he positioned the heater a foot in front of her and turned it to the highest setting. He draped the Army blanket over her head and around her, making a tent. Last he put the electric blanket, turned to the highest setting.

"Hold these so they trap the heat," he instructed.

He went to the kitchen and poured the boiling water into a large mug and added coffee crystals. She frowned at the first sip.

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

"No. It tastes a little -- odd."

"Instant coffee," he said, and held out his hand for the mug. "I know it's bad. Would you like hot chocolate?"

"Oh yes, if it's not too much trouble."

When he returned and gave it to her, she said, "Thank you. You're very kind. I didn't know how cold it would be. I've never been cold before, and I thought it would wear off by itself, later, the way heat does."

"Where are you from?" he asked.

"Costa Rica."

"You've never seen snow, have you?"

"Only in books. I used to look at the pictures when I was little and wonder how it got on the ground. My parents said it fell through the air, but I couldn't imagine it. Did it fall like rain? Did it sprinkle? Did it pour? Did it come straight down, or slant? Was it rough like sand, or smooth like flour? What was the texture? They never show snow falling in paintings. They only show it after it stops. Why is that?"

"I don't know. I never noticed."

"Even if they showed the snow falling, it wouldn't catch the quality of it. The way it falls." She held the cup in both hands and extended her arms, indicating the world outside the window.

"It varies. Sometimes the wind swirls it. Usually it's just a few flakes. I've never seen it this heavy."

"It made a sifting sound. I never expected that. And look at it on the window sill. It sparkles!"

He knelt to adjust the blankets, which had slipped to her shoulders. She started back. He hesitated and then pulled the blankets up so they were tented over her head and pulled in front of her again. "Keep these around you. You'll get warm faster."

"I'm grateful, but I shouldn't stay long."

"You have to warm up. Is there somewhere you have to go?"

"No. It's only -- I don't know you."

"My name is Wyatt Packard. I'm a junior, but I was a junior last year, too. I doubled up on my major, so it's costing me extra time." He gestured toward the bookshelves, overloaded with books and record albums, and the piles stacked on the floor, and under the windows. "I figured I might as well major in both the things I like, music and English. My Dad wants me to be a doctor, like him, but he's willing to pay for this, so why not?" He paused. "I know what you're wondering: I am perfectly safe." He spread out the words, little pauses between: am -- perfectly -- safe. "I'm only trying to help."

"Of course," she said.

"You -- " you're too trusting. Better not say it. She might bolt. Then she'd freeze again. "Now you know me." He walked to the window and raised the blind the rest of the way so she could watch more of the falling snow. She settled back and her shoulders lowered. The line between her eyebrows smoothed and her eyes focused past him, out the window.

He washed dirty dishes in the kitchen. Then he washed them again, to give her time to enjoy the snow and warmth and calm. He had dried and put everything away and was rinsing the sink when he heard her speak.

"Thank you."

"She talks!" he mumbled to himself. He wiped the counter, and his hands, and wandered into the room. "It's nothing," he said. He looked down at her looking up at him. On the street he would have passed her by without a second look, but close up she was striking. Her features were perfect in their symmetry and fit; none of them overshadowed the others. The overwhelming impression was of delicacy. Her nose, her cheekbones, her lips and chin: their fineness was startling, once noticed, but until then they were inconspicuous, even anonymous. Her eyelashes were pink, to go with the fire-engine hair, but her irises were almost black. There was a directness in her look that contradicted her shyness. She met his eyes without the reserve we use to keep the last piece of ourselves concealed.

"It was silly of me to go wandering around like that. I had no idea how the cold -- how powerful it is. I didn't know it would be so freezing wet. I feel much better. I'll go in a minute."

"Where do you live?"

"In the scholarship wing."

"That's a mile away. You'll be frozen again."

"I can't stay here."

"Sure you can. You take the bedroom. I'll sleep out here."

The window was behind him. She nodded toward it, and he turned and looked. The snowfall had become heavier. He sat on the floor, with his back against the sofa, and looked out at the torrent of white flakes.

"This is too warm now," she said, and turned off the heater. She sat next to him and draped the blankets over them, up to their necks.

Sheets of white fell fast and dense and straight down in the windless air. The cars at the curb were submerging. The streets were empty. All evening, the neighborhood had been quiet because most of the students had gone home for Thanksgiving. With the snow deadening the outside sound the silence in the apartment was complete, except for a while the popping of the heater as it cooled. When that ended there was only an occasional click as the electric blanket turned on and off. The two of them sat on the floor, their backs against the sofa, and watched without a word for half an hour, when the snow stopped abruptly. She roused herself.

"Now I can leave."

"You'll be knee-deep in snow."

"Of course. I wasn't thinking. I must seem very foolish to you."

"No. Just inexperienced."

"You understand! You're the first one. I've never spent the night at someone's apartment. You're a stranger. It's awkward. I don't know things yet -- what this place is like, what snow is like. This is a foreign country. People think I'm stupid or crazy. Didn't you?"

"No. I thought you were tripping."

"What's that?"

"Tripping? That's what happens when you're on drugs and take a trip to outer space inside your head."

She laughed. "You see? If I couldn't speak English, people would understand and they'd help me. But I look American. I sound American. So they assume I know these things. I'd never seen a comic book until I came here, or the Sunday funnies. Or, what did you call it? Instant coffee? I feel like a child. I came here to study, but I have to learn everything else at the same time. Thousands of things to figure out. It's overwhelming. Then there was the snow, like a wonderful gift from the sky, and everything turned soft and beautiful, and my worries disappeared. More beautiful than I could have imagined."

The way she spoke was gentle and calm, and absorbed in the attempt to say precisely what she wanted to say. With every sentence she was trying to discover something. There must be a way to keep her talking. "What part of Costa Rica are you from?" he asked.

"Monteverde. It's very remote. Nobody's heard of it, even in Costa Rica. The day we arrived was my fifth birthday. My father tells me things that happened before that, because I can't remember our life in the States."

"Then you're American."

"Yes. I was born in Alabama. My Meeting -- my church, you could call it, moved, well, to get away."

"What's your name?"

"Ada."

"Ada," he repeated. "Would you do me a favor?"

"If I can."

"Would you trade life stories with me?"

"Now?" she asked, and he nodded. "How lovely," she said. "What a perfect way to pass the time."

"You first?"

"Yes," she said. "If you like."