Wholly aware of her own displeasure, wondering at it and anxious to hide it, she was able to control her voice. Its tone gave no key to her thoughts. Harold answered her, still unwarned: "I mean--keep him at his distance. He's a different sort from you and I. I don't mean he isn't all right, as far as his kind goes--but he hasn't had the advantages." Harold spoke tolerantly, patronizingly. "Those fellows are apt to take advantage of any familiarity. They're all right if you keep 'em in their place--but they're mighty likely to break lose from it any minute. I'm sorry you ever let him call you Virginia." Virginia's eyes blazed. If it is one of the precepts of good breeding ever to let anger control the spirit, Virginia had made a breach indeed. Her little hands clenched, and she had a fierce and insane desire to beat those babbling lips with her fists. Then she struggled to regain her composure. "Listen, Harold," she began at last coldly. "I don't care to hear any more such talk as that." The man looked up then. He saw the righteous indignation in her face. He felt the rising tide of his own anger. "I'm only trying to warn you----" he began weakly. "And I don't need or want any such warnings. I don't care what you think of Bill--for that matter, you can be sure that Bill doesn't care at all either--but I'll ask you to keep your thoughts to yourself. Oh, if you only knew--how good, how strong, how true he has been--how tender he has been to me----" Harold was torn with jealous rage, and in his fury and malice he made the worst mistake of all. "I hope he hasn't been _too_ tender----" he suggested viciously. But at once he was on his feet, begging her pardon. He knew that he had made a dangerous and regrettable mistake. She forgave him--forgiveness was as much a part of her as her graciousness or her loyalty--but she didn't immediately forget. And Harold sat long hours with smoldering eyes and clenched hands, a climbing fire and fury in his brain, while the malice and resentment and jealousy that he held toward Bill grew to hatred, bitter and black. XVII The addition of Harold to their number did not influence, for long, Virginia's old relations with Bill. They were comrades as ever; they talked and chatted around the little stove in the hushed nights; they played their favorite melodies on the battered phonograph, and they took the same joyous, exciting expeditions into the wild. These latter diversions were looked upon with no favor by Harold, but he couldn't see how he could reasonably interfere. Nor did he care, at first, to accompany them. He had no love for the snow-swept wastes. The crust on the snow was steadily strengthening; most the days were clear and excessively cold. The journey could be undertaken soon. Only a few more days of the adventure remained.