cape
more closely about her with a snuggling movement), "and I had just sat
down for the moment."

Frona noted that she was very beautiful, and her woman's eye roved over
and took in the splendid furs, the make of the gown, and the bead-work
of the moccasins which peeped from beneath. And in view of all this,
and of the fact that the face was unfamiliar, she felt an instinctive
desire to shrink back.

"And I haven't hurt myself," the woman went on. "Just a mood, that was
all, looking out over the dreary endless white."

"Yes," Frona replied, mastering herself; "I can understand. There must
be much of sadness in such a landscape, only it never comes that way to
me. The sombreness and the sternness of it appeal to me, but not the
sadness."

"And that is because the lines of our lives have been laid in different
places," the other ventured, reflectively. "It is not what the
landscape is, but what we are. If we were not, the landscape would
remain, but without human significance. That is what we invest it with.

"'Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate'er you may believe.'"

Frona's eyes brightened, and she went on to complete the passage:

"'There is an inmost centre in us all,
Where truth abides in fulness; and around.'

"And--and--how does it go? I have forgotten."

"'Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in--'"

The woman ceased abruptly, her voice trilling off into silvery laughter
with a certain bitter reckless ring to it which made Frona inwardly
shiver. She moved as though to go back to her dogs, but the woman's
hand went out in a familiar gesture,--twin to Frona's own,--which went
at once to Frona's heart.

"Stay a moment," she said, with an undertone of pleading in the words,
"and talk with me. It is long since I have met a woman"--she paused
while her tongue wandered for the word--"who could quote 'Paracelsus.'
You are,--I know you, you see,--you are Jacob Welse's daughter, Frona
Welse, I believe."

Frona nodded her identity, hesitated, and looked at the woman with
secret intentness. She was conscious of a great and pardonable
curiosity, of a frank out-reaching for fuller knowledge. This
creature, so like, so different; old as the oldest race, and young as
the last rose-tinted babe; flung far as the farthermost fires of men,
and eternal as humanity itself--where were they unlike, this woman and
she? Her five senses told her not; by every la