Even at this distant hour I can relive the sorrow and passion of that day. I remember how the solemn gray clouds went scudding beneath the gray solemn sky; how the wild geese, the last of the winged migrants, called and called plaintively on their way southward; how the wind, like a harried soul that answered the driven birds, shrieked and wailed when its impetuous gusts chased down the last of the red leaves and scattered the swirling eddies of dust. A wild, mad day! a day when the whole earth seemed risen in fury and revolt! a day when the elements, alive with the vehemence and vain frenzy of all created things, were voicing the sadness and despair of the universe in a dirge for the dying year! And on that tumultuous day, in that world of raging wind and cloud, Yasma came to me with such a light in her eyes as the dying may show when they bid farewell to love. One glance at her shuddering form confirmed my fears; I knew her message, and felt intuitively the hopelessness of protest or reproach. Without a word she flung her arms about me, stormily sobbing; and I held her in an embrace so long and fierce that I might have been a foe striving to crush her frail body. But at length she struggled free, and stood before me, moist-eyed and pathetically smiling. "Good-bye, my beloved, good-bye," she murmured, and edged toward the door. "Do not go, do not go!" I cried, and I stretched out my arms imploringly. But some numbing force had paralyzed my limbs--I was unable to move a step. "Good-bye, my beloved," she repeated, with a look like a tormented angel's. "Good-bye--until the spring!" And her slender form slipped past the door, and its wooden bulk closed behind her. And as she escaped, sudden action came to my frozen limbs, and I rushed out of the cabin, calling and calling, "Yasma! Yasma!" And then, frantically, "Yasma! Yasma!" But only the wind replied. A whirl of dust struck me in the face, and for a moment I was half blinded. Then, when I turned to look for Yasma, no Yasma was to be seen. And in bewilderment and balked anger and despair, I realized that I should see her no more until the birds were flying north. III _The Will of Yulada_ CHAPTER XX _THE SECOND WINTER_ It would be pointless to dwell at length upon my second winter in Sobul. In everything essential, it was a repetition of the winter before. There were the same long solitary months, the same monotonous loneliness by the evening firelight, the same trudging through the snow on companionless expeditions, the same arduous gathering of faggots and the same fear of predatory wild things, the same howling of wolves from across the valley and the same clamoring of storm-winds, the same bleak questionings and the same impotent wrath at the unkindliness of my fate.