w of life they were no;
only, only by the fast-drawn lines of social caste and social wisdom
were they not the same. So she thought, even as for one searching
moment she studied the other's face. And in the situation she found an
uplifting awfulness, such as comes when the veil is thrust aside and
one gazes on the mysteriousness of Deity. She remembered: "Her feet
take hold of hell; her house is the way to the grave, going down to the
chamber of death," and in the same instant strong upon her was the
vision of the familiar gesture with which the woman's hand had gone out
in mute appeal, and she looked aside, out over the dreary endless
white, and for her, too, the day became filled with sadness.

She gave an involuntary, half-nervous shiver, though she said,
naturally enough, "Come, let us walk on and get the blood moving again.
I had no idea it was so cold till I stood still." She turned to the
dogs: "Mush-on! King! You Sandy! Mush!" And back again to the
woman, "I am quite chilled, and as for you, you must be--"

"Quite warm, of course. You have been running and your clothes are wet
against you, while I have kept up the needful circulation and no more.
I saw you when you leaped off the sled below the hospital and vanished
down the river like a Diana of the snows. How I envied you! You must
enjoy it."

"Oh, I do," Frona answered, simply. "I was raised with the dogs."

"It savors of the Greek."

Frona did not reply, and they walked on in silence. Yet Frona wished,
though she dared not dare, that she could give her tongue free rein,
and from out of the other's bitter knowledge, for her own soul's sake
and sanity, draw the pregnant human generalizations which she must
possess. And over her welled a wave of pity and distress; and she felt
a discomfort, for she knew not what to say or how to voice her heart.
And when the other's speech broke forth, she hailed it with a great
relief.

"Tell me," the woman demanded, half-eagerly, half-masterly, "tell me
about yourself. You are new to the Inside. Where were you before you
came in? Tell me."

So the difficulty was solved, in a way, and Frona talked on about
herself, with a successfully feigned girlhood innocence, as though she
did not appreciate the other or understand her ill-concealed yearning
for that which she might not have, but which was Frona's.

"There is the trail you are trying to connect with." They had rounded
the last of the cliffs, and