e
still held open.

CHAPTER XIV

The storm which the night had foreshadowed broke with violence before
dawn. At times during the night, the wind had howled about the little
building in a way which recalled to Nora one of the best-remembered
holidays of her childhood. She and her mother had gone to Eastborne for
a fortnight with some money Eddie had sent them shortly after his
arrival in Canada. The autumnal equinox had caught them during the last
days of their stay, and the strong impression which the wind had made
upon her childish mind had remained with her ever since.

Lying, wakeful through the long hours, staring wide-eyed out of the
little curtainless window into the thick darkness, thick enough to seem
palpable; the memory of how, on that far-off day she had passed long
hours with her nose flattened against the window of the dingy little
lodging-house drawing-room watching the wonder of the wind-lashed sea,
came back to her with extraordinary vividness.

The spectacle had filled her with a sort of terrified exultation. She
had longed to go out and stand on the wind-buffeted pier and take her
part in this saturnalia of the elements. She had something of the same
feeling now; a longing to leave her bed and go out onto the windswept
prairie.

Strangely enough, she had no sensation of fatigue or weariness either
bodily or mentally. Her mind, indeed, seemed extraordinarily active.
Little petty details of her childhood and of her life with Miss Wickham,
long forgotten, such as the day the gardener had cut his thumb, trooped
through her mind in an endless procession. She had a strange feeling
that she would never sleep again.

But just as the blackness without seemed turning into heavy grayness,
lulled possibly by the wind which had moderated its violence and had now
sunk to a moan not unpleasant, and by the rythmic breathing of the
sleeping man at her side, she fell asleep.

For several hours she must have slept heavily, indeed. For when she
awoke, it was to find the place at her side empty. Hurriedly dressing
herself, she went out into the living-room. That was empty, too. But the
lamp was lighted, the kettle was singing merrily on the stove and the
fire was burning brightly. And outside was a whirling veil of snow which
made it impossible to see beyond the length of one's arm.

Had she been marooned on an island in the ultimate ocean of the
Antartic, she could not have felt more cut off from the wor