exist in
reality and thus they were out of accord with the realism with which he
regarded life. On the long winter nights, when the snow lay endless and
deep over the wilderness, and the terrible cold locked the land tight,
he would sit in his trapping cabins, gazing into the smoke clouds from
his pipe, and a tender enchantment would steal over him. He would have
admitted to no human being those wistful and beautiful hours that he
spent alone. He was known as a man among men, one who could battle the
snows and meet the grizzly in his lair, and he would have been ashamed
to reveal this dreamy, romantic side of his nature, these longings that
swept him to the depths. He would go to his bed and lie for long,
tingling, wakeful hours stirred by dreams that through no earthly chance
could he conceive as coming true. Arms about him, lips near, beauty and
tenderness and hallowed wakenings,--he had imagined them all in his
secret hours.

In the deep realms of his spirit, it seemed to him, he had always known
this girl,--this straight, graceful, lovely being with eyes of an
angel and smile of a happy child. He had denied her existence, and here
she was before him. Dark hair, waving and just a little untidy in the
brisk wind, oval face and determined little chin, shadowing lashes and
the exquisite contrasts of brunette beauty, a glimpse of soft, white
flesh at the throat through her dark furs, smart tailored suit and
dainty hands,--they were all known to him of old. For all the
indifference and distance with which she looked at him and at the other
townspeople, there was a world of girlish sweetness in her face. For
all her caste, there was spiritual beauty and gracious charm in every
facial line.

Curiously, Bill had no tinge of the resentment he might have expected
that his dream should come half-true only to be shattered like the
bubble it was. Because he had no delusions. He knew that he was only
an employee, that a girl of her caste would ever regard him as the great
regard those that serve them--kindly but impersonally--but for now
he asked for nothing more. To him she was a creature past belief, a
being from another world, and he was content to serve her humbly. He
knew that he was of the forest and she of the cities of men, and soon
they would take separate trails. His only comfort, heretofore, had
been that his dream could not possibly come true, that the stuff of
which it was made could never exist in th