t the rainfall would
drain down the corners rather than lie in the cavities and thus rot the
timbers. Planks were cut for the roof, and tree boughs laid down for
the floor.

The floor space was only seven feet long by eight wide--just enough
for two bunks--and the walls were about as high as a sleeping-car
berth. The work was done at the day's end.

In the next few days Bill mostly left the two together, trying to find
his consolation in the wild life of the forest world outside the cabin.
Harold had taken advantage of his absence and had made good progress:
Virginia's period of readjustment was almost complete. She was prepared
to make the joys of the future atone for the sorrows of the past.

Harold was still good-looking, she thought; his speech, though breaking
careless at times, was attractive and charming; and most of all his
love-making was more arduous than ever. In the city life that they
planned he would fit in well; his uncle would help him to get on his
feet. Fortunately for their peace of mind, they did not know the real
truth,--that Kenly Lounsbury himself was at that moment struggling
with financial problems that were about to overwhelm him. She told
herself, again and again, that her life would be all that she had
dreamed, that her fondest hopes had come true. A few weeks more of the
snow and the waste places,--and then they could start life anew.

Yet there was something vaguely sinister, something amiss in the fact
that she found herself repeating the thought so many times. It was
almost as if she were trying to reassure herself, to drown out some
whispering inner voice of doubt and fear. She couldn't get away from a
haunting feeling that, in an indescribable way, her relations with
Harold had changed.

His ardent speeches didn't seem to waken sufficient response in her own
breast. She lacked the ecstasy, the wonder that she had known when, as
a girl, she had first become engaged to Harold. They embarrassed her
rather than thrilled her; they didn't seem quite real. Perhaps she had
simply grown older. That was it: some of her girlish romance had died a
natural death. She would give his man her love, would take his in
return, and they would have the usual, normal happiness of marriage.
All would come out well, once they got away from the silence and the
snows.

Perhaps his large and extravagant speeches were merely out of place in
the stark reality of the wilderness; they could thril