rself that she was not afraid of the snow, of
being lost, of being unable to find Gratton. But she could not climb
down the cliff; she knew that she would fall. Dizzy and sick, shivering
with dread and cold, she turned back always.

She let her fire die down, not noticing it. Then the cold reminded her,
and she worked long building another. She knew where a block of matches
was; she had seen King set it carefully away. In her excitement she
struck dozens of matches, dropping the burnt ends about her.

At last her fire blazed up and she warmed herself. Then she was
conscious of a strange faintness and realized that she was hungry. She
went to their food cache and ransacked it hastily. She opened a tin of
sardines and came back to the fire with it in her hands. She had no
clear conception of the deed when, half of the fish consumed, the smelly
stuff revolted her and she hurled the remaining part into the bed of
coals.

* * * * *

King stamped the loose snow from his boots and came in. Gloria stood
confronting him, tense, rigid, white-faced, her hands stiff at her
sides. She wanted to cry out, to upbraid him, all of her fear of the day
turned into molten anger, but at the moment her strength failed
strangely, her heart seemed to be stopping, she choked up. The surge of
her relief, like a suddenly released current, impacting with that other
current of her unleashed anger, made of her consciousness a sort of
wild, fuming whirlpool. Nothing was clear to her just then save that
Mark King had come back and that, no doubt, his heart was filled with
jeers; she could not read the expression of his shadowed face, but
fancied it one of mockery.

King was tired throughout every muscle of his body. He set down his
rifle, tossed his hat aside, and slumped down by the fire. Coming in
from the storm-cleansed open he sniffed at the closeness of the cave. It
was not alone the smell of smoke; his first thought was that Gloria had
been cooking something. Then he noted the sardine-can. With a stick he
raked it out of the coals. And now Gloria could read his expression well
enough as he jerked his head up.

"In God's name," he demanded, "what do you mean by a thing like that?
Are you stark, raving mad?"

For a moment she was at a loss to understand what had enraged him. The
act of tossing the distasteful food into the fire had been purely
involuntary; her conscious mind had hardly taken cognizance of the