come with its thaws, there was no suggestion of
spring in the landscape. From the white, monotonous expanse of snow rose
bleak, skeleton shapes of trees lifting bare, black boughs to the
snow-sodden clouds. Upon either side of the road lay a forest of
desolation--varied only by the sad, dull green of the wind-blown
pines--which stretched away and away until it became a mere blue shadow
as unsubstantial as smoke on the mountain horizon; and yet spring, still
invisible and to be denied by the doubting, was in the air, with all its
soft intimations of bud and blossom and joyous life; and spring was in
Pearl's heart as she hastened up the hill toward Seagreave. It brushed
her cheek like a caress, it touched her lips like a song.

When she was about a quarter of a mile up from the village she crossed a
little bridge which spanned a deep and narrow crevasse, a gash which
cleft the great mountain to its foundation. Pearl lingered here a moment
to rest, and, leaning her arms on the railing, looked down curiously
into the mysterious depths so far below.

The white walls of the sharp, irregular declivity reflected many cold,
prismatic lights, and down, far down where the eye could no longer
distinguish shapes and outlines, there lay a shadow like steam from some
vast, subterranean cauldron, blue, dense, impenetrable. It fascinated
Pearl and she stood there trying to pierce the depths with her eye,
until at last, recalled to herself by the chill in the wind, she again
turned and hastened up the hill. But before seeking Seagreave and asking
him to share his breakfast with her, she followed the instincts of her
inherent and ineradicable coquetry and, stopping at her father's cabin,
made a toilet, slipping into one of her own gowns and rearranging her
hair. Then, throwing a long cape about her and adjusting her mantilla,
she closed the door behind her and turned into the narrow trail which
led at sharp right angles to the road to Saint Harry's cabin. It was,
Pearl reflected, almost like walking through the tunnel of a mine; the
snow walls on either side of her were as high as her head. Occasionally
the green fringes of a pine branch tapped her cheek sharply with their
rusty needles. Then the tunnel widened to a little clearing where stood
the cabin, picturesque with the lichened bark of the trees on the
rough-hewn logs.

Seagreave had evidently seen her coming, for before she lifted her hand
to knock he threw open the door. "Ah,"