sound mad,
but I'm not. And this isn't me: not our me, James. Dickory, dickory,
dock--But this is worse than before. I wonder why God thought of men and
women--and snow--and sheep--and dogs. Dogs--" Her words stopped; she
heard the little noises of the fire. She found that this was not the way
in which to combat terrors. She knew how Zebedee would look if he saw
her now, and she stood up slowly. The muscles in his cheek would twitch,
and the queer flecks in his eyes would chase each other as he watched
her anxiously and sadly. She could not let him look like that.

She walked into the middle of the room and looked about her. She opened
the door and stood in the dark hall and refused the company of the
thronging thoughts. Up the stairs she went, seeing nothing more alarming
than poor Mr. Pinderwell, and on the landing she found the friendly
children whom she loved. Jim followed her, and he seemed to share her
views; he paused when she did and stood, sturdily defying the unknown;
and so they went together into every room, and mended Mildred Caniper's
fire, and returned freely to the kitchen.

"We've conquered that," Helen said. "We'll conquer everything. Fear
is--terrible. It's ugly. I think only the beautiful can be good."

She held to the high mantelshelf and looked at the fire from between her
arms. A few minutes ago, life had been some mighty and incalculable
force which flung its victims where it chose, and now she found it could
be tamed by so slight a thing as a human girl. She had been blinded,
deafened, half stupefied, tossed in the whirlpool, and behold, with the
remembrance that Zebedee believed in her, she was able to steer her
course and guide her craft through shallows and over rapids with a
steady hand.

"There now!" she exclaimed aloud, and turned a radiant face as Halkett
entered.

For an instant, he thought it was his welcome, and his glow answered
hers before both faded.

"Good-evening, George."

"Good-evening, Helen," he answered, and there was a little mockery in
his tone.

He stood close to her, and the frosty air was still about him. A fine
mist and a smell of peat came from his clothes as the fire warmed them.
She did not look at him, and when she would have done so, his gaze
weighted her eyelids so that she could not lift them; and again, as on
that first occasion in the hollow, but ten times more strongly, she was
conscious of his appreciation and her sex. There was peril here, and
wi