time he might
approximate to Sophie Carr's idea of a man.

He wanted to see her, to talk with her, to make her define her attitude
a little more clearly. Looking back with his mind a great deal less
confused by emotion, he wondered why he had been so dumb, why he had not
managed to convey to her that the things she foresaw as denying them
happiness or even toleration for each other were not a final state in
him, that his ideas and habits and pursuits were in a state of flux that
might lead him anywhere. She had thrown cold water on the flame of his
passion. But he remembered with a glow of happiness that she had kissed
him.

He pondered deeply upon this, wondering much at the singular attraction
this girl held for him, the mystery of that strange quality that drew
him so. He lacked knowledge of the way and power of women. It had never
touched him before. It was indeed as if he had been asleep and had
wakened with a start. He was intensely curious about that, curious to
know why he, who had met nice girls and attractive women by the score,
had come into the North woods to be stirred out of all reason by a slip
of a girl with yellow hair and expressive gray eyes and a precocious
manner of thinking.

He looked forward eagerly to seeing her again. He somehow felt a little
more sure of himself now. He could think of a number of things he wished
to ask her, of ideas he wanted to expand into speech. The hurt of her
blank refusal had dulled a little. He could anticipate a keen pleasure
just in seeing her.

In the morning he set about outfitting. He had come down from Porcupine
with dogs. He had seen dog teams bearing the goods and chattels of
innumerable natives. He perceived the essential usefulness of dogs and
snowshoes and toboggans in that boundless region of snow. Canoes when
the ice went out, dogs and toboggans when winter came again to lock
tight the waterways. So during his stay at Porcupine he had accepted the
gift of a dog from a Cree, traded tobacco for another, and he and Lamont
had whiled away the long evenings in making two sets of harness and a
small toboggan. A four-dog team will haul a sizable load. Two would move
all the burden of food and gear that he had in his possession. He had
learned painfully to walk upon snowshoes--enough so that he was over the
poignant ache in the calf of the leg which the North calls _mal de
racquette_. Altogether he felt himself fully equal to fare into the
wilderness alone.