He looked at the pile. He _had_ chopped an awful lot! “I thought I might as well cut enough to last for a while,” he explained. “A good idea,” she agreed. “And we might as well take a lot upstairs while we’re about it. I’ll take some, if you’ll load me.” She held out her arms, and he piled them full, then loaded his own, and they went up together. She knelt beside him, watching, while he laid the fire. He felt somewhat insecure in his knowledge of fire-making, and he tried to remember just how Clive had done it the day before. But he felt nothing critical in Rose-Ann’s watching; and apparently he remembered well, for the fire behaved quite as it should. He waited until the proper moment, put on the cannel coal, and drew the fire-screen in front of the fireplace. Rose-Ann stood up. “Now we’ll go and get breakfast,” she said. In the kitchen, she turned to him. “Do you like omelettes?” she asked. “I love them,” he said. “With peas and things in? There’s a can of little peas here.” She searched in a drawer and found a can-opener. “Here, let me,” said Felix authoritatively, and took it from her. She surrendered it, and bent to another drawer, bringing out another apron. “Must wear,” she said, and tied it around him. The touch of her fingers was too much. He turned and took her in his arms, and found himself tightly bound in hers, and kissed the eager lips uplifted to his. “Oh, Felix!” she cried in a weak, smothered voice. “Felix, lover!” “And now,” she said at last, smiling happily and rousing herself from their dream, “we really must get breakfast!” 2 After breakfast, which was prolonged for hours by talk and cigarettes and endless cups of coffee, they “bundled up” and took a long walk, through the deep snow, stumbling and laughing like children, and as indefatigable as children. First they went down to the lake, that snowy waste strewn with high-piled ice-hummocks, and with the blue of water showing strangely here and there. Then they turned their backs on it, and walked toward the west, where the black branches of trees made delicate patterns against the sky. They were as if aware of the kinship of their love to the life of the earth, and seeking outdoors that magical sympathy of natural living things which no roof-tree, however hospitable, can furnish to lovers. This great white expanse, with no green thing visible anywhere, with not even the friendly touch of the ground underfoot, might have seemed to hold out no invitation to their love. It was an earth sunken in winter-sleep, apparently unconscious of their presence, vastly indifferent to their demand. And yet they loved it, and it gave them something which they craved.