ed to draw
a long, hard breath before saying more. "I was so determined that every
one else should be right that I didn't care how wrong _I_ was--which is
like handing out water from a poisoned well."

She wished she could touch him, or slip her hand into his, by way of
comfort, but the distance between them was still too great. She could
only say: "That's putting it unjustly to yourself, Thor. If you've made
mistakes they've been splendid ones. They've been finer than the ways in
which most of us have been right."

She thought he smiled.

"Oh, I don't ask to be defended or explained. I only want to say that
from to-night onward I shall be starting on a new plan of life. I shall
be working from the inside, and not from the outside. If I'm to do
anything in this world, something must first be accomplished in me--and
I've got to begin." He turned from his contemplation of the dim, white
landscape to look down at her. "Will you help me? Will you show me how?"

It seemed to her that without having moved she was somehow nearer to his
breast. She couldn't so much as glance up at him. She could hardly
speak. The words only trembled out as she said, "If I can, Thor dear."

"You can," he said, simply, "because you know."

She barely lifted her eyes. "Oh, do you think I do?"

"You've got the secret of it. There _is_ a secret. I see that now--a
secret, just as there is to everything else that's worth learning."

"Oh, Thor, you make me afraid--"

"Through all these dreadful months," he pursued, tranquilly, "you've
kept us straight, and led us out, and raised us higher, not because
you're specially strong, Lois, or specially wise, but because--because
you've got some other quality. I want you to show me what it is, so that
I may have it, too. If I could get it--get just a little of it--it would
seem as if Claude hadn't--hadn't died in vain." She was now so near his
breast that he was obliged to bend his head in order to speak down to
her. "You wrote me last year that you were looking for a substitute for
love. Couldn't you find it in that?"

She was so close to him that her cheek brushed the fur collar of his
coat, yet she managed to keep her mind clear and to control her voice so
as to ask the thing she most vitally needed to know. "And if I did,
Thor--if I _could_--what should you find it in?"

"In adoration--for one thing," he said, simply.

It was such happiness that she tore herself away from it. Advancing
swiftly