ody mounted from her feet to her heart. She thought
that he had been sent to her by that new God. As for Berg, he had found
his God again, the taming touch of a small human hand.

* * * * *

It was in May, one morning in May--she had long ago lost count of her
days--when Sheila stepped across her sill and saw the ground. Just a
patch it was, no bigger than a tablecloth, but it made her catch her
breath. She knelt down and ran her hands across it, sifted some gravel
through her fingers. How strange and various and colorful were the atoms
of stone, rare as jewels to her eyes so long used to the white and violet
monotony of snow. Beyond the gravel, at the very edge of the drift, a
slender crescent of green startled her eyes and--yes--there were a dozen
valorous little golden flowers, as flat and round as fairy doubloons.

Attracted by her cry, Berg came out, threw up his nose, and snuffed.
Spring spoke loudly to his nostrils. There was sap, rabbits were
about--all of it no news to him. Sheila sat down on the sill and hugged
him close. The sun was warm on his back, on her hands, on the boards
beneath her.

"May--May--May--" she whispered, and up in the firs quite suddenly, as
though he had thrown reserve to the four winds, a bluebird repeated her
"May--May--May" on three notes, high, low, and high again, a little
musical stumble of delight. It had begun again--that whistling-away of
winter fear and winter hopelessness.

The birds sang and built and the May flies crept up through the snow and
spun silver in the air for a brief dazzle of life.

The sun was so warm that Berg and Sheila dozed on their doorsill. They
did little else, these days, but dream and doze and wait.

The snow melted from underneath, sinking with audible groans of
collapse and running off across the frozen ground to swell Hidden
Creek. The river roared into a yellow flood, tripped its trees, sliced
at its banks. Sheila snowshoed down twice a day to look at it. It was a
sufficient barrier, she thought, between her and the world. And now,
she had attained to the savage joy of loneliness. She dreaded change.
Above all she dreaded Hilliard. That warmth of his beauty had faded
utterly from her senses. It seemed as faint as a fresco on a
long-buried wall. Intrusion must bring anxiety and pain, it might bring
fear. She had had long communion with her stars and the God whose name
they signaled. She, with her dog friend under