Until this spasm of pain seized her heart, Eglah had not realized or acknowledged that she cherished any hope, save that God would preserve the life of the man who so completely renounced her. If she had vaguely trusted time might soften and remove his bitterness, she understood at last the mockery of a delusion that she had unconsciously indulged. Above the evensong of the rippling water at her feet, rang his passionate words that last day in the carriage: "I shall try not to come home." To escape the possibility of proximity to her he had plunged into unknown wilds, where only the trails of foxes, wolves, bears, could thread the silent desolation, and at all hazards he would keep the promise of his farewell note: "Your path in future shall be spared my shadow." Wandering into the jaws of death, rather than see her again; for how elusive, how slender, the chances of meeting whalers. As in a mirage she seemed to see him on the colonnade at Nutwood, as he stood looking with eloquent, happy eyes at her, assuring her father: "When I know she is waiting at home for me, do you suppose all the ice in Greenland can shut me away from her?" And now the Arctic Circle would hold his chosen grave, because she could never cross it. The mail for America held no word for her; but doubtless kind messages had come to an old man whose sunken eyes would shine with delight over tidings from "the lad." To all of us come times when, self-surrendered to depression, some psychic imp drags from mental oblivion and shakes fiendishly before us ghoulish images long forgotten; and now, as purplish-grey shadows gathered in the mill, Eglah saw that vision of "Were-Wolves," the souls of wretched men fleeing from light, hiding in Polar midnight. "Each panter in the darkness Is a demon-haunted soul, The shadowy, phantom were-wolves, Who circle round the Pole. Their tongues are crimson flaming, Their haunted blue eyes gleam, And they strain them to the utmost O'er frozen lake and stream; Their cry one note of agony That is neither yelp nor bark, These panters of the northern waste Who hound them to the dark." The voice of Mrs. Mitchell calling her name aroused Eglah, and she staggered to her feet, swaying slightly as from a stinging blow. That silent, yearning tenderness, to which she had gladly yielded for so many months, now appeared an insult to her womanly pride. Rejected and despised, abandoned forever, made by her husband's repudiation a target for gossip and harsh comment, why should she love him? Why, when too hopelessly late, had her heart so unexpectedly followed him, refusing to relax its quest?