nder the spell of the evening, and the exaltation which had come to
her as Nora had not yet departed. Besides, she read between the lines
of St. Vincent's conversation, and was oppressed by the timidity which
comes over woman when she faces man on the verge of the greater
intimacy.

It was a clear, cold night, not over-cold,--not more than forty
below,--and the land was bathed in a soft, diffused flood of light
which found its source not in the stars, nor yet in the moon, which was
somewhere over on the other side of the world. From the south-east to
the northwest a pale-greenish glow fringed the rim of the heavens, and
it was from this the dim radiance was exhaled.

Suddenly, like the ray of a search-light, a band of white light
ploughed overhead. Night turned to ghostly day on the instant, then
blacker night descended. But to the southeast a noiseless commotion
was apparent. The glowing greenish gauze was in a ferment, bubbling,
uprearing, downfalling, and tentatively thrusting huge bodiless hands
into the upper ether. Once more a cyclopean rocket twisted its fiery
way across the sky, from horizon to zenith, and on, and on, in
tremendous flight, to horizon again. But the span could not hold, and
in its wake the black night brooded. And yet again, broader, stronger,
deeper, lavishly spilling streamers to right and left, it flaunted the
midmost zenith with its gorgeous flare, and passed on and down to the
further edge of the world. Heaven was bridged at last, and the bridge
endured!

At this flaming triumph the silence of earth was broken, and ten
thousand wolf-dogs, in long-drawn unisoned howls, sobbed their dismay
and grief. Frona shivered, and St. Vincent passed his arm about her
waist. The woman in her was aware of the touch of man, and of a slight
tingling thrill of vague delight; but she made no resistance. And as
the wolf-dogs mourned at her feet and the aurora wantoned overhead, she
felt herself drawn against him closely.

"Need I tell my story?" he whispered.

She drooped her head in tired content on his shoulder, and together
they watched the burning vault wherein the stars dimmed and vanished.
Ebbing, flowing, pulsing to some tremendous rhythm, the prism colors
hurled themselves in luminous deluge across the firmament. Then the
canopy of heaven became a mighty loom, wherein imperial purple and deep
sea-green blended, wove, and interwove, with blazing woof and flashing
warp, till the most de