nd have you forgotten that it is late--too late to ask questions?"

He stood, comprehending her doubtfully, with immeasurable joy, and then
went out to get his overcoat.

"Bring your things in here," she said, "it is cold in the hall. And
wrap up warmly! That is more important than all the Genevan and the
homiletical!"

He bade her good night, subdued with happiness that seemed to blot out
the troublous past, to be the beginning of new life. New happiness
brought new awkwardness:--

"This was not my regular night," he said threateningly. "I came
to-night instead of to-morrow night."

Gabriella could answer a remark like that quickly enough.

"Certainly: it is hard to wait even for a slight pleasure, and it is
best to be through with suffering."

He looked as if cold water and hot water had been thrown on him at the
same time: he received shocks of different kinds and was doubtful as to
the result. He shook his head questioningly.

"I may do very well with science, but I am not so sure about women."

"Aren't women science?"

"They are a branch of theology," he said; "they are what a man thinks
about when he begins to probe his Destiny!"

XVII

David slept peacefully that night, like a man who has reached the end
of long suspense. When he threw his shutters open late, he found that
the storm had finished its work and gone and that the weather had
settled stinging cold. The heavens were hyacinth, the ground white with
snow; and the sun, day-lamp of that vast ceiling of blue, made the
earth radiant as for the bridal morn of Winter. So HIS thoughts ran.

"Gabriella! Gabriella!" he cried, as he beheld the beauty, the purity,
the breadth, the clearness. "It is you--except the coldness, the
cruelty."

All day then those three: the hyacinthine sky, the flashing lamp, the
white earth, with not one crystal thawing.

It being Saturday, there was double work for him. He knocked up the
wood for that day and for Sunday also, packed and stored it; cut double
the quantity of oats; threw over twice the usual amount of fodder. The
shocks were buried. He had hard kicking to do before he reached the
rich brown fragrant stalks. Afterwards he made paths through the snow
about the house for his mother; to the dairy, to the hen-house. In the
wooden monotony of her life an interruption in these customary visits
would have been to her a great loss. The snow being over the cook's
shoe-tops, he took a basket and dug the v