She knocked on Harold's door, then waited for a reply. But the cabin was ominously silent. Her fears increased: she knew that if Bill were present he would have wakened at her slightest sound. He would have seemed to know instinctively that she was there. She knocked again, louder. "Who's there?" a sleepy voice answered. Virginia felt a world of impatience at the dull, drowsy tones. Harold had been able to sleep! He wasn't worrying over Bill's safety. "It's I--Virginia. I'm up and dressed. Did Bill come back?" "Bill? No--and what in God's earth are you up this early for? Forget about Bill and go back to bed." "Listen, Harold," she pleaded. "Don't tell me to go back to bed. I feel--I know something's happened to him. He couldn't have gone on clear to the cabin in that awful snow; he either started back or camped. In either case, he's in trouble--freezing or exhausted. And--and--I want you to go out and look for him." Harold was fully awake now, and he had some difficulty in controlling his voice. In the first place he had no desire to rescue Bill. In the second, he was angry and bitterly jealous at her concern for him. "You do, eh--you'd like to send me out on a bitter night like this on a fool's errand such as that. Where is there a cabin along the way--you'd only kill me without helping him." "Nonsense, Harold. You could take that big caribou robe and some food, and if you had to camp out it wouldn't kill you. Please get up and go, Harold." Her tone now was one of pleading. "Oh, I want you to----" "Go back to bed!" But Harold remembered, soon, that he wasn't talking to his squaw, and his voice lost its impatient note. "Don't worry about Bill any more. He'll come in all right. I'm not going out on any wild-goose chase like that--on a day such as to-day will be. You'll see I'm right when you think about it." "Think!" she replied in scorn. "If it were Bill he wouldn't stop to think. He'd just act. You won't go, then?" "Don't be foolish, Virginia." Angry words rose in her throat, but she suppressed them. A daring idea had suddenly filled her with wonder. It came full-grown: that she herself should start forth into the snow deserts to find Bill herself. Virginia had not been trained to self-reliance. Except for her northern adventure, she had never been obliged to face difficulties, to care for and protect herself, to work with her hands and do everyday tasks. To build a fire, to repair a leaking tap, to take responsibility for anything above such schoolday projects as amateur plays an social gatherings would have seemed tasks impossible of achievement. At first it had never occurred to her that she might herself be of aid to Bill. The old processes of her mind still ran true to form; she had gone to ask a man to carry out her wish. At first she had felt wholly helpless at his refusal. But why should she not go herself?