And so those thirty days passed slowly, swiftly. Slowly, to the thoughts that would outrun them. Swiftly, for the happiness that was compressed into them. Each thought each had known the other, yet no day passed without its new revelation. They looked at one another with new eyes and each found the other changing day by day. Paul found new beauties of winsomeness in Hope each time he looked at her, for the outward reflects the inward and her soul was at the Spring, and in truth all she had gone through had fined her like gold in the fire. And to Hope, her lover's passionate devotion and high self-control brought a depth of loving trustfulness which would have led her to his bidding whatever it had been. Their perfect faith in one another grew with the days. Their love expanded like a glorious flower when the winter of discontent is passed, and the quickening rains and sunshine of the spring have worked in it, and the summer of delight is come. Their tiny rough house of logs and clay became a very shrine of loveliness. Its half-opaque windows were diamonds, its furnishings of cedar-wood, its commonest utensils rarest china and purest gold. For love transforms the world. At times when he was away--for there was still much work for him in the prison and the hospital--she would turn out her scanty stock of clothing and set to work on it with the true womanly instinct for adornment. And many times she laughed at herself and her futile attempts at turning old things into new, for fashions at Kara ran to warmth and comfort and knew no other considerations. But to him she was robed like a princess and her beauty increased with the hours. When he was away from her he hungered to be back. When she placed his supper on the board he would bend and kiss the fingers that held the plate, and throw an arm round her and draw her close, and kiss her waist, her arm, anything that was part of Hope Ivanovna. For his heart had starved valiantly and without complaint for years, and now the time of plenty had arrived. How nervous and excited she was that last day of the thirty! With what passionate worship he had kissed her in the morning before he left her. And then he had come back and caught her to him again, and strained her close, and closer still. And then he flung up his arms and cried "Ah God! Ah God!" and went quickly. And she could do no work that day, but fluttered restlessly about the house, and stood and looked at the driving snow, and made futile attempts at further cleaning up of the diamonds and the cedar-wood and the gold, which were already polished beyond the polishing of ordinary human hands. And so the day passed somehow, but how she hardly knew. She had no desire for ordinary human food, and yet she ate, and prepared for him a meal beyond the wont.