"Why do you think we are not?" she returned, with a curious smile. At this query I was struck by a fancy so wild that even now I hesitate to mention it: the thought that Yasma and her people were not wholly human! that for half the year they walked the earth as men and women, and for the other half sailed the sky as birds! Nor did this notion seem quite so absurd as it would have appeared before my arrival in Sobul. Here in this world-forsaken valley, with its periodically migrating inhabitants, anything at all seemed possible; even the supernatural appeared to lose its remote and fabulous glow. And so, for an instant, I had the impression that something unearthly enveloped Yasma, even Yasma, my wife! And once again, as on first coming to Sobul, I experienced the sense of otherworldly forces at work all about me, forces that had Yasma in their keeping and were bound to wrest her from me, no matter how I might groan and struggle, no matter how I might cry out and entreat and reach forth my arms and call and call after her dwindling form! CHAPTER XIX _THE CYCLE IS COMPLETED_ With what sadness I watched the autumn gradually return to Sobul! The crimson and tan and russet woods, glowing with a forlorn and dying inner radiance, were tragic as with the sorrow of a crumbling universe; each frightened leaf that scurried earthward with a sharp blast, seemed laden with some hope that had withered; the legions of wild ducks and geese that went speeding ever, ever beyond the southern peaks, were to me awe-inspiring and solemn portents. And the clouds that came whirling and clustering by in troops and squadrons at the goad of the high wind, were grim with evil reminders; and their glee in overrunning the sky's blue and blurring the fringes of the peaks, was as the glee of those dark forces that invisibly blotted out my happiness. Partly in order to drive tormenting premonitions from my mind, I tried to keep well occupied during those harrowing days. I had not forgotten the preparations I had made for the previous winter, nor the need of fortifying myself for the winter to come. Once again I gathered large supplies of food and firewood; once again I sealed all cracks and crannies in my cabin walls, procured heavy garments, and made ready for a hermit's life. And in these preparations Yasma helped me as energetically and skillfully as last year. But she worked sadly, and in silence; and often the tears were in her eyes as she stored the firewood in orderly heaps or arranged the dried fruits, nuts and grains in neat and convenient piles.