After Ethan had gone, life seemed to stand still for a long, long time. The only real events were his letters, not to Val, although she had written him the very night after he went away. His letters were all addressed to her grandmother, and yet every syllable seemed to the girl's mind to be meant for herself--to be charged with subtle meaning, intelligible to no one else. At Christmas he wrote the two girls a single perfunctory page of cousinly greeting that arrived with his presents, a couple of Russian silver belts. But this letter was addressed to Val, and she would not open it till she was alone. Inside was an enclosure in a separate envelope: "DEAR COUSIN VAL,--Forgive me for not answering your letter. It would be nice of you to send me a line, now and then, to tell me how things go on at the Fort, and whether I can do anything for anybody there. I enclose cheque. "Your affectionate cousin, ETHAN GANO." "'Cousin!' 'cousin!' forever 'cousin!'" ejaculated the girl; and she answered him the same day: "DEAR ETHAN,--Thank you for the beautiful belt, but I do not forgive you for not answering my letter. Still, I will do anything in reason that you ask me if you don't ever call me cousin again." And then followed an account of her surreptitious household expenditures. He answered early in the New Year: "DEAR VAL,--I obey your mandate, and will not hereafter own you for a cousin. I believe that by strenuous wishing you could almost think yourself out of the relationship." "I am very sure I could" [she wrote back] "if you would let me." That letter, and several to follow, elicited nothing. She ate her heart out with humiliation and with longing, and then salved the hurt with dreams. Her best times were when she was quite alone, in the dark of the night or early in the morning. Regularly as she rose up, or lay down to sleep, she kissed the face of the little watch he had given her. Sometimes, under the spell of an old and long-abandoned habit, she would slip to her knees by the bedside. But instead of any prayer, old or new, she would fling wide her arms, crying under her breath: "How long, O Lord--how long?" Never in her blackest hour did she believe there was worse in store for her than waiting. In a quiet way people came and went at the Fort more than ever before. Julia and Jerry, when he was home for the vacations, Ernest Halliwell, and Harry Wilbur in particular, after he had thrown up the fine position in Boston that Ethan had put in his way--they, and others, trooped in and out, carrying Val off riding, sleighing, dancing, boating. Harry Wilbur proposed to her on an average of six times a year, and took her smiling and affectionate refusal for mere postponement. It was to Val a life of waiting, but not of inaction.