e but the manner of
authority and had adopted again a natural habit of command, dropped or
laid aside from indifference or inertia, but instinctively resumed when
through some powerful feeling he became again his normal self, alive and
alert, vigorous and enthusiastic. It was as if he had suddenly awakened
to a whole world of new possibilities and new opportunities.

Beneath his long, steady gaze her own eyelids fluttered and fell; her
cheeks flushed a deeper rose; her heart beat madly. She was furious at
herself for these revealing weaknesses, and yet she, too, was conscious
of new, undreamed-of possibilities, sweet, poignantly sweet.

"Pearl," his voice was low, shaken by the emotion which had overtaken
both of them, "do you know that, as far as you and I are concerned, we
are the only living human beings in all our world?"

She looked at him and, unknown to herself, her face still held its glow
of rapture; her eyes were pools of love.

Her little rill of laughter was broken and shaken as falling water. "The
sheriff didn't get us, and yet we're prisoners, prisoners of the snow."

"And you, my jailer, will you be kind to me?" But there was nothing
pleading in his tone. It rang instead with exultant triumph.

"Why, Pearl"--a virile note of power as if some long-dreamed-of mastery
were his at last swelled like a diapason through his voice--"we're in
for a thaw, a big thaw, but it will take time to melt down that mountain
out there in the crevasse; and you and I are here--alone--for a
fortnight, at least a fortnight." He emphasized the words, lingering
over them as if they afforded him delight.

"A fortnight! Here! Alone with you!" she cried. "Never, never. There
must be a way--" she murmured confusedly and ran to the window to hide
her agitation and embarrassment, pulling the curtain hastily aside and
looking out unseeingly over the hills. She was trembling from head to
foot.

The wind had risen and was wailing and shrieking over the bare hill and
the air was dim with flying snow; but the spring that hours before had
kissed her cheek and touched her lips like a song rose now in Pearl's
heart. She pressed her tightly clasped hands against her breast and
closed her eyes. A new world! And she and Harry were in it together--and
alone.

CHAPTER XIV

The dawns rose, the suns set, after the avalanche as before, and Pearl
and Seagreave, alone in the cabin, isolated from the world of human
beings, took up thei