One morning, as they waited breathlessly listening to the silence of the ice sea, the lake groaned close beside them, and suddenly the floe on which they stood parted from the field nearer shore. In a few minutes the lane of open water was six feet in width. Sommers pointed to it, and without a word they struck out to the north, weaving their way in and out of the floes, now clambering over heaved-up barriers of ice, now flying along an unscarred field, again making their way cautiously across sheets of shivered surface ice that lay like broken glass beside a crevasse. Finally, they reached the inner field. Sommers looked at his watch, and said: "We might as well go ashore here. That was rather a narrow chance. I must look in at the Keystone to see how Webber is. I shouldn't wonder if he had typhoid." "I wish we could go on," Alves replied regretfully. "I was hoping the lane ran on and on for miles." She put her hands under his coat and leaned against him, looking wistfully into the arctic sea. "Let me go back!" she pleaded. "I should like to skate on, on, for days!" "You can't go back without me. Some day, if this weather keeps up, we'll try for the Michigan shore." "I should like to end things in this way," she continued musingly; "just us two, to plunge on and on and on into that quiet ice-field, until, at last, some pool shot up ahead--and then! To go out like that, quenched right in the heat of our lives; not chilled, piece by piece." Sommers moved impatiently. "It isn't time for that." "No?" she asked rather than assented, and turned her face to the city. "I am not sure; sometimes I think it is the ripe time. There can be nothing more." Sommers did not answer, but began to skate slowly. Half an hour later they climbed over the hills of shore ice, and he hurried away to the Keystone. Alves walked slowly south on the esplanade. The gray sea of ice was covered now with the winter sun. The pools and crevasses sent up sheets of steam. Her eyes followed the ice lingeringly. Once she turned back to the lake, but finally she started across the frozen grass plots in the direction of the temple. She could see from a distance a black figure seated on the portico, and she hastened her steps. She recognized the familiar squat, black-clothed person of Mrs. Ducharme. There, in the sunlight between the broken pillars, this gloomy figure seemed of ill omen. Alves regretted that she had turned back from the ice. Mrs. Ducharme showed no sign of life until Alves reached the steps. She was worn and unkempt. A ragged straw hat but partly disguised her rumpled hair. Alves recalled what Miss M'Gann had said about her drinking. "I've been to see you two, three times," Mrs. Ducharme said, in a hoarse, grumbling tone; "but you'se always out. This time I was a-going to wait if I'd stayed all night." "Come in," Alves answered, unlocking the door. The woman dragged herself into the temple.