Christmas day dawned bright and cold, with a whip of north-west wind and a skiff of loose snow sifting across the frozen prairies. I found myself lying awake in the morning, thinking of Jean, and of all I had hoped that day would mean to me. This was the dream that was gone; the picture I had had to tear out of my heart, only it would not stay gone; it plagued me in my sleep, it haunted me in every silent moment of the day. That Jean should be so strong, so set, so immovable, and, as it seemed to me, so unreasonable, in spite of all her delicate wistfulness and strange uncommonness of spirit--that was a side of Jean's character which all the years of our childhood and youth had not revealed to me. . . I had not re-opened my suit. I had accepted her decision. But the old picture would come back, and this Christmas morning as it swam before my eyes it stirred within me an immeasurable poignancy of spirit. "Merry Christmas!" shouted Marjorie, poking her head into my room. Marjorie was going through a time of strangely mixed emotions. Her heart was light on her own account and heavy on mine, and in these days she found the bridge between laughter and tears an extremely narrow one. Perhaps it was for that reason that her shout of "Merry Christmas!" ended in something like a sob, and, with a little rush, she plunged on to my bed and threw her arms about me; she wrapped them around my neck and shoulders and drew my face to hers. And as her cheek lay against mine a little warm trickle of moisture wended its way down, upon, and across my lips, and I felt her frame tremble as it rested near me. "Not crying, Marjorie; not crying, on this of all mornings!" I exclaimed, although my own throat was full. "Not crying, dear--on my account?" To that question she snuggled closer, and after a little I heard her whispering in my ear. "It will come all right in time, Brother mine," she said; "all right in time. I can't think--I can't believe--anything else. Don't you feel--don't you _know_--that it will?" And so to soothe her, and that her greatest day might not be spoiled, I said I knew it would come all right in time, but there was a stone between my lungs and a band of iron about my chest.