ly these last words cost her her self-possession. Instantly
she was ill at ease. The reestablishment of their old relation could
only come gradually: although she had not anticipated it, the six years
of separation had wrought their changes. She felt that she needed time
to become adjusted to him--just as a man who has been blind needs time
to become adjusted to his vision. And at once their proximity, in this
lonely cabin, was oddly embarrassing.

"Where's Bill?" she asked. She turned to the door and called. "Bill,
where are you?"

His voice seemed quite his own when he answered from the stillness of
the night. "I'll be in in a moment--I was just getting a load of
wood."

It wasn't true. He had been standing dumb and inert in the darkness,
his thoughts wandering afar. But he began hastily to fill his arms with
fuel. Virginia turned back to her new-found lover.

She was a little frightened by the expression on his face. His eyes
were glowing, the color had risen in his cheeks, he was curiously eager
and breathless. "Before he comes," he urged. "We've been apart so
long----"

His hands reached out and seized hers. He drew her toward him. She
didn't resist: she felt a deep self-annoyance that she didn't crave his
kiss. She fought away her unwonted fear; perhaps when his lips met hers
everything would be the same again, and her long-awaited happiness would
be complete. He crushed her to him, and his kiss was greedy.

Yet it was cold upon her lips. She struggled from his arms, and he
looked at her in startled amazement. In fact, she was amazed at
herself. When she had time to think it over, alone in her bed at night,
she decided that her desperate struggle had been merely an attempt to
free herself from his arms before Bill came in and saw them. She only
knew that she didn't want this comrade of hers, this stalwart forester,
to see her in Harold's embrace. But in the second of the act she had
known a blind fear, almost a repulsion, and an overwhelming desire to
escape.

She turned with a radiant smile to welcome the tall form that strode in,
looking neither to the right nor left, arms heaped with wood. She
found, much to her surprise, that she felt more at ease after Bill came
in. She asked him how he had happened to get trace of the missing man;
he answered in an even, almost expressionless tone that someway puzzled
her. Then she launched desperately into that old life-saver in moments
of