the restless beauty of the fire. After nightfall, when the wind began
to shake the cabin, he had built up the fire, and its light now fought
ruddily against the whiteness of the moon. Hugh had not lighted his
lamp, nor let Bella light it, but he told her to make some strong coffee
and keep it hot on the stove. "When Sylvie comes in," he had said,
"she'll be exhausted. We'll give her a hot drink and send her to bed,
eh, Bella! The foolish child!" This had been said softly, but with a
wild, half-vacant look which Bella could not meet.

It was her belief that Pete and Sylvie had gone, not to return that
night or any other night. In a desperate, still fashion she guarded this
flaming conviction, peering up from long contemplations of it to learn
whether there flickered any light of torment on Hugh's face. But all
day, after the queer blankness of face and eyes with which he had first
received her news of Sylvie's disappearance, he had been alternately gay
and tranquil. All morning he had mended his boat, and in the afternoon
he had cleaned his gun; and whenever he could cajole Bella into being
his audience, he had talked. His talk was all of Sylvie, of her pretty
childishness, her sweet, wayward ways, of her shyness, her timidity; and
later, when supper was cleared away and he had throned himself in
the center of that familiar circle of firelight, he had dropped his
beautiful voice to a lower key and had boasted of Sylvie's love for him.

Bella sat on a big log sawed to the height of a low stool. She sat with
her face bent down between her hands as though she were saving her eyes
from the fire, but those bright, devoted eyes never left Hugh's face,
though sometimes they made of it but a blurred image set in the broken
crystals of her tears.

Thus, together, they heard the first rumble of the storm and saw the
white squares of moonlight wiped from the floor as with a dark cloth.
Next, the windows seemed to jump at them and jump away. "Lightning!"
said Hugh. "She'll be afraid! Will Pete be able to comfort her? Will he,
Bella?" Then, because she took courage to look into his face, she saw
that his heart had been burnt all day, but that his faith, stronger than
his fear, had kept the flame smothered, almost below his consciousness.

While the storm raged across their roof, beat a brutal tattoo close
above their deafened heads, pushed at the door, drove a pool of water
under the threshold, Hugh walked up and down, to and fro,