Late as it was, it was inevitable that Jack must start. Esmée watched him prepare once more for the journey. When he was ready to set out, she said to him, with an extreme effort: "If any one should come while you are gone, I am to let him in?" "Do as you think best, dear; but I am afraid that no one will disturb you. It will be a lonely watch. I wish I could help you through with it." "It is my watch," said Esmée. "I must keep it." She would have been thankful for the company even of Tip, to answer for something living, if not human, in the house; but the dog insisted so savagely on following his master that she was forced to set him free. She closed the door after him, and locked it mechanically, hardly aware of what she did. * * * * * There is a growth of the spirit which is gradual, progressive, healthful, and therefore permanent. There are other psychical births that are forced, convulsive, agonizing in their suddenness. They may be premature, brought on by the shock of a great sorrow, or a sin perhaps committed without full knowledge of its nature, or realization of its consequences. Such births are perilous and unsure. Of these was the spiritual crisis through which Esmée was now passing. She had made her choice: human love was satisfied according to the natural law. Now, in the hours of her solitary watch, that irrevocable choice confronted her. It was as a cup of trembling held to her lips by the mystery of the Invisible, which says: Whoever will drink of this cup of his desire, be it soon, be it late, shall drain it to the dregs, and "wring them out." Esmée had come very soon to the dregs of her cup of trembling. In such anguish and abasement her new life of the spirit began. Will she have strength to sustain it, or must it pass like a shaken light into the keeping of a steadier hand? She was but dimly aware of outward changes as the ordeal wore on. It had been pale daylight in the cabin, and now it was dusk. It had been as still as death outside after the night of storm, the cold relenting, the frost trickling like tears down the pane; but now there was a rising stir. The soft, wild gale, the chinook of the Northwest, came roaring up the peak--the breath of May, but the voice of March. The forest began to murmur and moan, and strip its white boughs of their burden, and all its fairy frost-work melted like a dream. At intervals in the deep timber a strange sound was heard, the rush and thump of some soft, heavy mass into the snow. Esmée had never heard the sound before; it filled her with a creeping dread. Every separate distinct pounce--they came at intervals, near or far, but with no regularity--was a shock to her overwrought nerves. These sounds had taken sole possession of her ear. It was hence a double shock, at about the same hour of early twilight when her visitor had come the night before, to hear again a man's feet in the trench outside, and again a loud knock upon the door.