he cried, a touch of concern in
his voice, "I was just going down to the other cabin to make up the
fires before you came. If you stopped there you must have found it cold,
and you did stop," his quick eye noting the change she had effected in
her costume.

"Yes," she smiled, "they wouldn't let me come up the hill in Jose's coat
and my rose petticoats, and I felt like a miner in the clothes they lent
me." She had entered the cabin and had taken the chair he had pushed up
near the crackling, blazing fire of logs which he had just finished
building to his satisfaction. The bond of sympathy between Seagreave and
Jose was probably that they both performed all manual tasks with a sort
of beautiful precision. Gallito had characterized Harry's cabin as the
cell of a monk. It was indeed simple and plain to austerity, and yet it
possessed the beauty of a prevailing order and harmony. Shelves his own
hands had made lined the rough walls and were filled with books; beside
the wide fireplace was an open cupboard, displaying his small and
shining store of cooking utensils. For the rest a table or two and a few
chairs were all the room contained.

It was the first time Pearl had ever been in the cabin, and, although
she maintained the graceful languor of her pose, lying back a little
wearily in her chair, yet her narrow, gleaming eyes pierced every corner
of the room, with avid eagerness absorbing the whole, and then returning
for a closer and more penetrating study of details, as if demanding from
this room where he lived and thought a comprehensive revelation of him,
a key to that remote, uncharted self which still evaded her.

Seagreave himself, whose visible presence was, for the time, outside the
field of her conjecture, was busy preparing her breakfast, and now,
after laying the cloth, he placed a chair for her at the table and
announced that everything was ready. He seated himself opposite her and
Pearl's heart thrilled at the prospect of this intimate _tete-a-tete_,
the color rose on her cheek, her lashes trembled and fell.

"Where's Jose?" she said hastily, to cover her slight, unusual
embarrassment. "Tell me quick how you managed it. Neither Bob nor Pop
could tell me because someone was always with us."

"Ah," he said, "the gods were with us, but it was a wild chance, I
assure you. Fortunately, it was still snowing. Hugh and Jose were
already in the cart and everyone else had hastened home as fast as he or
she could go