enest and most biting tooth. The drop in the temperature was
tremendous, but the ski-ers were jubilant. Next day the "running" would
be fast and perfect. Already the mass was settling, and the surface
freezing into those moss-like, powdery crystals that make the ski run
almost of their own accord with the faint "sishing" as of a bird's wings
through the air.

IV

That night there was excitement in the little hotel-world, first because
there was a _bal costume_, but chiefly because the new snow had come.
And Hibbert went--felt drawn to go; he did not go in costume, but he
wanted to talk about the slopes and ski-ing with the other men, and at
the same time....

Ah, there was the truth, the deeper necessity that called. For the
singular connection between the stranger and the snow again betrayed
itself, utterly beyond explanation as before, but vital and insistent.
Some hidden instinct in his pagan soul--heaven knows how he phrased it
even to himself, if he phrased it at all--whispered that with the snow
the girl would be somewhere about, would emerge from her hiding place,
would even look for him.

Absolutely unwarranted it was. He laughed while he stood before the
little glass and trimmed his moustache, tried to make his black tie sit
straight, and shook down his dinner jacket so that it should lie upon
the shoulders without a crease. His brown eyes were very bright. "I
look younger than I usually do," he thought. It was unusual, even
significant, in a man who had no vanity about his appearance and
certainly never questioned his age or tried to look younger than he was.
Affairs of the heart, with one tumultuous exception that left no fuel
for lesser subsequent fires, had never troubled him. The forces of his
soul and mind not called upon for "work" and obvious duties, all went to
Nature. The desolate, wild places of the earth were what he loved;
night, and the beauty of the stars and snow. And this evening he felt
their claims upon him mightily stirring. A rising wildness caught his
blood, quickened his pulse, woke longing and passion too. But chiefly
snow. The snow whirred softly through his thoughts like white, seductive
dreams.... For the snow had come; and She, it seemed, had somehow come
with it--into his mind.

And yet he stood before that twisted mirror and pulled his tie and coat
askew a dozen times, as though it mattered. "What in the world is up
with me?" he thought. Then, laughing a little, he tu