"She's turned into the most uncontrollable sporting proposition you ever heard of! She's up there at Lynx Peak camp, with her rifle, and old Miller. They're after that big boar--the biggest, horridest thing in the whole forest. I saw him once. He's disgusting. Scott objected, and so did I, but, somehow, I'm becoming reconciled to these break-neck enterprises she goes in for so hard--so terribly hard, Duane! and all I do is to fuss a little and make a few tearful objections, and she laughs and does what she pleases." He said: "It is better, is it not, to let her?" "Yes," returned Kathleen quietly, "it is better. That is why I say very little." There was a moment's silence, but the constraint did not last. "It's twenty below zero, my poor friend," observed Kathleen. "Luckily, there is no wind to-night, but, all the same, you ought to keep in touch with your nose and ears." Duane investigated cautiously. "My features are still sticking to my face," he announced; "is it really twenty below? It doesn't seem so." "It is. Yesterday the thermometers registered thirty below, but nobody here minds it when the wind doesn't blow; and Geraldine has acquired the most exquisite colour!--and she's so maddeningly pretty, Duane, and actually plump, in that long slim way of hers.... And there's another thing; she is _happier_ than she has been for a long, long while." "Has that fact any particular significance to you?" he asked slowly. "Vital!... Do you understand me, Duane, dear?" "Yes." A moment later she called in her clear voice: "Gate, please!" A lantern flashed; a door opened in the lodge; there came a crunch of snow, a creak, and the gates of Roya-Neh swung wide in the starlight. Kathleen nodded her thanks to the keeper, let the whip whistle, and spent several minutes in consequence recovering control of the fiery young horses who were racing like scared deer. The road was wide, crossed here and there by snowy "rides," and bordered by the splendid Roya-Neh forests; wide enough to admit a white glow from myriads of stars. Never had Duane seen so many stars swarming in the heavens; the winter constellations were magnificent, their diamond-like lustre silvered the world.