and their silence alike punctuated by the wail of the mountain wind
about the cabin and the singing of the burning logs upon the hearth.

And it was during those evening hours that Seagreave felt most the
shyness which her constant presence induced in him. By day he busied
himself in securing her comfort, but by night he was tormented by his
own chivalrous and fastidious thought of her, by his desire to reassure
her mind, without words, if possible, as to the consequences of their
isolation.

But sometimes after he had lighted her candle and she had said
good-night, and had entered the little room where she slept, he would
either sit beside the glowing embers or else build up afresh the great
fire which was never permitted to die out night or day during the winter
months, his thoughts full of her, dwelling on her, clinging to the
memories of the day.

Jose's personality had been neither ubiquitous nor dominating. Seagreave
had noticed him no more about the cabin than he had the little mountain
brook which purled its way down the hill; but now his housemate was
feminine, and with every passing hour he was more conscious of it. At
night, after Pearl had gone to bed, he felt her presence as definitely
as though she were still there. Some quality of her individuality
lingered and haunted the room and haunted his thoughts as the sweet,
unfamiliar odor of an exotic blossom permeates the atmosphere and
remains, even when the flower is gone.

And as for Pearl, whether she walked on the barren hillsides or dreamed
by the fire, or stood at the window watching Harry chop wood or carry
water from the rushing mountain brook, her mind held but one thought,
her heart but one image--him.

The studious abstraction, the ordered calm which characterized
Seagreave's cabin, made fragrant by burning pine logs and fresh with the
cold winds from the mountain tops, had altered by imperceptible and
subtle gradations until the atmosphere was now strangely electrical,
throbbing with vital life, glowing with warmth and color. In outer
semblance nothing was changed, no more than was the appearance of the
world outside, and yet beneath the surface of the lives in the cabin, as
beneath the surface of the earth without, all the mighty forces of
Nature were bent to one end.

Without, the spring thaws which were to melt down the mountain of snow
in the ravine below were no longer presaged, but at hand. The rain fell
for hours each day, but the dul