. But he did
not take the trouble. His consciousness was receiving too many new
impressions, so that in a manner it became bewildered. At first, as has
been seen, the mere effect of the vision was enough; then the sight
of the girl sufficed him. But now curiosity awoke and a desire for
something more. He must speak to her, touch her hand, look into her
eyes. He resolved to approach her, and the mere thought choked him and
sent him weak.

When he saw her again from the shelter of the pole trail, he dared not,
and so stood there prey to a novel sensation,--that of being baffled in
an intention. It awoke within him a vast passion compounded part of rage
at himself, part of longing for that which he could not take, but most
of love for the girl. As he hesitated in one mind but in two decisions,
he saw that she was walking slowly in his direction.

Perhaps a hundred paces separated the two. She took them deliberately,
pausing now and again to listen, to pluck a leaf, to smell the fragrant
balsam and fir tops as she passed them. Her progression was a series
of poses, the one of which melted imperceptibly into the other without
appreciable pause of transition. So subtly did her grace appeal to the
sense of sight, that out of mere sympathy the other senses responded
with fictions of their own. Almost could the young man behind the trail
savor a faint fragrance, a faint music that surrounded and preceded her
like the shadows of phantoms. He knew it as an illusion, born of his
desire, and yet it was a noble illusion, for it had its origin in her.

In a moment she had reached the fringe of brush about the pole trail.
They stood face to face.

She gave a little start of surprise, and her hand leaped to her breast,
where it caught and stayed. Her childlike down-drooping mouth parted
a little more, and the breath quickened through it. But her eyes, her
wide, trusting, innocent eyes, sought his and rested.

He did not move. The eagerness, the desire, the long years of ceaseless
struggle, the thirst for affection, the sob of awe at the moonlit
glade, the love,--all these flamed in his eyes and fixed his gaze in an
unconscious ardor that had nothing to do with convention or timidity.
One on either side of the spike-marked old Norway log of the trail
they stood, and for an appreciable interval the duel of their glances
lasted,--he masterful, passionate, exigent; she proud, cool, defensive
in the aloofness of her beauty. Then at last