Never had her distracting charm been more in evidence. He had not seen her since they parted on the previous night. He had built for himself a cot in the woodshack, and had contrived a curtain that could be drawn in front of her bed in the living-room. Thus he could enter in the morning, light the fires, and start breakfast without disturbing her. She had dressed her hair, now in a different way, so that it fell in low waves back from the forehead and was bunched at the nape of her neck. The light swiftness of her dainty grace, the almost exaggerated carnation of the slightly parted lips, the glad eagerness that sparked her eyes, brought out effectively the picturesqueness of her beauty. His grave eyes rested on her so long that a soft glow mantled her cheeks. Perhaps her words had been too free, though she had not meant them so. For the first time some thought of the conventions distressed her. Ought she to hold herself more in reserve toward him? Must she restrain her natural impulses to friendliness? His eyes released her presently, but not before she read in them the feelings that had softened them as they gazed into hers. They mirrored his poignant pleasure at the delight of her sweet slenderness so close to him, his perilous joy at the intimacy fate had thrust upon them. Shyly her lids fell to the flushed cheeks. “Breakfast is ready,” she added self-consciously, her girlish innocence startled like a fawn of the forest at the hunter’s approach. For whereas she had been blind now she saw in part. Some flash of clairvoyance had laid bare a glimpse of his heart and her own to her. Without misunderstanding the perfect respect for her which he felt, she knew the turbid banked emotions which this dammed. Her heart seemed to beat in her bosom like an imprisoned dove. It was his voice, calm and resonant with strength, that brought her to earth again. “And I am ready for it, lieutenant. Right about face. Forward—march!” After breakfast they went out and tramped together the little path of hard-trodden snow in front of the house. She broached the prospect of a rescue or the chances of escape. “We shall soon be out of food, and, anyhow, we can’t stay here all winter,” she suggested with a tremulous little laugh. “You are naturally very tired of it already,” he hazarded. “It has been the experience of my life. I shall fence it off from all the days that have passed and all that are to come,” she made answer vividly. Their eyes met, but only for an instant. “I am glad,” he said quietly. He began, then, to tell her what he must do, but at the first word of it she broke out in protest. “No—no—no! We shall stay together. If you go I am going, too.” “I wish you could, but it is not possible. You could never get there. The snow is too soft and heavy for wading and not firm enough to bear your weight.” “But you will have to wade.” “I am stronger than you, lieutenant.”