moves goes
with quiet footfalls.

Endlessly long were the minutes. Hours were eternities. She stood by the
rock wall until she was chilled; as noiselessly as a creeping shadow she
went back to her fire and shivered before it and warmed herself, turning
her head quickly to peer into the dark of the hidden tunnel, turning
again as quickly to glance toward her rude door, her heart leaping at
every crackle of her fire; she thawed some of the cold out of her and
went to look out again. A hundred times she made the brief journey.

From being lightning-swift, thought became a laborious, drugged process;
her excited mind had harboured throngs of vivid visions; she had known a
period of over-active mental stimulation; she had seen, as in the actual
flesh, Mark King ploughing through the snow, going over ridges, pushing
on and on and on. Always further away, driving on through limitless
distances. She had seen him fall, his body crashing down a sheer
precipice; she had seen him lying, his face turned up, the snowflakes
falling, falling, falling, covering it.... She had seen him going on
again; she had seen him breaking his way to the open, getting back among
other men, falling exhausted, but calling upon them to go back to her.
She had seen men hurrying; dog-sleds harnessed; packs of provisions; men
on snow-shoes. She had seen them coming toward her across the miles.
Some one else was coming, too. It was big Swen Brodie, his face
horrible. There was a rabble at his back. It was a race between these
men and those other men. She had felt that Brodie was putting out a
terrible hand toward her; she had seen other men leap upon him, dragging
him back.... King had returned; King and Brodie were struggling.... Then
again she saw King, fighting his way through the snow, going for help.
She had tried to reason; he could be only a few miles away....

But at last a tired brain refused to create more of these swift
pictures. She stared out and did not think. She merely felt the weight
of the silence, the weight of utter loneliness. With dragging feet she
returned to her fire and looked into the coals, and from them to the
further dark, and from it back to the pale light about her canvas. She
sank into a condition of lethargy. The silence had worked a sort of
hypnosis in her. Briefly, in her wide-opened eyes there was no light of
interest. Vaguely, as though she had no great personal concern in the
matter, she wondered how long it would be