and was
plunging up the slope. Somehow, though the crest of the wave had been
reached the night before and that usually, Tira had assured him, meant a
following calm, he was certain of seeing her to-day. It was not that he
wanted to see her, but an inner conviction, implacably fixed as the laws
of nature that are at no point subject to the desires of man, told him
she would come. The hut must be warm for her. The fire must be relaid.
And, he told himself grimly, the apex had been reached. The end of the
thing was before them. He must not yield to her again. He must command
her, persuade and conquer her. She must let him send her away.

At the hut he almost expected to see her footprints in the light snow by
the door. But the exquisite softness lay untouched. The day was a heaven
of clearness, the shadows were deep blue and the trees beginning the
slow waving motion of their majestic secrecies. He took out the key from
under the stone, went in and made his fire with a hand too practiced to
lose in efficacy from its haste. Presently it was roaring upward and,
after a glance about to see that the room was not in any disorder too
great for him to remedy quickly, he walked back and forth, and whenever
it died down enough to let him, fed the fire. It began to seem to him as
if he were going to be there days feeding the fire to keep her warm, but
it was only a little before ten when he heard a step and his heart
choked him with its swelling of relief. At once he was also calmer. A
moment ago even, he would have wondered how he could meet her, how keep
the storm of entreaty out of his voice if he was to beg her to let him
save her. But now he knew he should be himself as she had briefly known
him and though he must command, he should in no sense offend. He stood
still by the fire, half turning toward the door, to wait. It was an
unformulated delicacy of his attitude toward her that she should not
find him going forward to meet her as if she were a guest. She should
enter as if the house were her own. But she did not enter. There was a
hand at the door. It knocked. Then he called:

"Come in."

The door opened, under what seemed to him, in his first surprise, a
halting hand and a woman stepped in. It was Nan. She came a hesitating
pace into the room and stood looking at him, after the one interested
glance about her, smiling a little, half quizzically, as if aware she
had brought a surprise and yet not in doubt of its being we