stared at me in that uncertain doubt that follows dreams.

"I am here, Jacqueline," I said. "With you--always, till you send me
away. Remember that even in dreams, Jacqueline."

She knew me now, and she was recoiling from me, out through the hut
door, into the blinding snow. I sprang after her.

"Jacqueline! It is I--Paul! It is Paul! Jacqueline!"

She was running from me and screaming in the snow. I heard her
moccasins breaking through the thin ice crust. And, mad with terror, I
rushed after her.

"Jacqueline! It is Paul!" I cried.

And as I emerged from the hut's shelter a red-hot glare from the east
seemed to sear and kill my vision. It was the rising sun. I had
thought it night, and it was already day. And I could see nothing
through my swollen eyelids except the white light of the shining snow.
The wind howled round me, and though the sun shone, the snowflakes
stung my face like hail.

I did not know under the influence of what dread dream she was. But I
ran wildly to and fro, calling her, and now and again I heard the sound
of her little moccasins as she plunged through the knee-high snow.

Sometimes I seemed to be so near that I could almost touch her hand,
and once I heard her panting breath behind me; but I never caught her.
And never once did she answer me.

"What is it? What is it?" I pleaded madly. "Jacqueline, don't you
know me? Don't you remember me?"

The sound of the moccasins far away, and then the whine of the wind
again. I did not know where the huts were now. I could see nothing
but a yellow glare. And fear of Leroux came on me and turned my heart
to water. I stood still, listening, like a hunted stag. There came no
sound.

It was horrible, in that wild waste, alone. I tried to gather my
scattered senses together.

Eastward, I know, the river lay, and that blinding brightness came from
the east. Southward a little distance, was the hill that we had last
ascended on the evening before. I could discern the merest outlines of
the land, but I fancied that I could see that it sloped upward toward
the south.

I set off in the direction of the hill, and soon I found myself
climbing. The elevation hid the sun, and this enabled me to glimpse my
surroundings dimly, as through a heavy veil.

I called once more, and then I was scrambling up the hill, stumbling
and falling on the ice-coated boulders. My coat was open, and the wind
cut like a knife-edge, but I did not n