l her as ever when
she returned to her native city. Likely he could dance, after a little
practice, as well as ever; fill his niche in society and give her all
the happiness that woman has a right to expect upon this imperfect
earth. There was certainly nothing to be distressed over now. They had
been brought together as if by a miracle; any haunting doubt and fear,
too subtle and intangible to put into words or even concrete thought,
would quickly pass away.

She did not, however, go frequently into his arms. Someway, an
embarrassment, a sense of inappropriateness and unrest always assailed
her when he tried to claim the caresses that he felt were his due. And
at first she could not find a plausible explanation for her reserve.
Perhaps these tendernesses were also out of place in the grim reality of
the North; more likely, she decided, it was a subtle sense, the guardian
angel of her own integrity, warning her that too intimate relations with
that man must be avoided, isolated and exiled as they were. "Not now,
Harold," she would tell him. "Not until we're established again--at
home."

Finally his habits and his actions did not quite meet with her approval.
The first of these was only a little thing,--a failure to keep shaved.
Shaving in these surroundings, without a mirror, with a battered old
razor that had lain long in the cabin and had to be sharpened on a
whetstone, where every drop of hot water used had to be laboriously
heated on the stove, was an annoying chore at best: besides, there was
no one to see him except Virginia and the guide. The stubble matted and
grew on his lips and jowls. Bill, in contrast, shaved with greatest
care every evening. A more important point was that his avoidance of
his proper share of Bill's daily toil. He neither hewed wood nor drew
water, nor made any apologies for the omission. Rather he gave the idea
that Bill's services were due him by rights.

There was a little explosion, one afternoon, when he ventured to advise
her in regard to her relations with Bill. The forester himself was
cutting wood outside the cabin: they heard the mighty ring of his ax
against the tough spruce. Virginia was at work preparing their simple
evening meal; Harold was stretched on her own cot, the curtain drawn
back, his arms under his head, his unshaven face curiously dark and
unprepossessing.

"You must begin to keep on your own ground--with Bill, Virginia," he
began in the silence.