whenever this inevitable picture grew before Wade's eyes, as the
drowning figure of his fancy vanished, it suddenly changed features, and
presented the face of Mary Damer, perishing beyond succor.

Of course he knew that this was but a morbid vision. Yet that it came at
all, and that it so agonized him, proved the force of his new feeling.

He had not analyzed it before. This thought of death became its
touchstone.

Men like Wade, strong, healthy, earnest, concentrated, straightforward,
isolated, judge men and women as friends or foes at once and once for
all. He had recognized in Mary Damer from the first a heart as true,
whole, noble, and healthy as his own. A fine instinct had told him that
she was waiting for her hero, as he was for his heroine.

So he suddenly loved her. And yet not suddenly; for all his life, and
all his lesser forgotten or discarded passions, had been training him
for this master one.

He suddenly and strongly loved her; and yet it had only been a beautiful
bewilderment of uncomprehended delight, until this haunting vision of
her fair face sinking amid the hungry ice beset him. Then he perceived
what would be lost to him, if she were lost.

The thought of Death placed itself between him and Love. If the love
had been merely a pretty remembrance of a charming woman, he might have
dismissed his fancied drowning scene with a little emotion of regret.
Now, the fancy was an agony.

He had too much power over himself to entertain it long. But the grisly
thought came uninvited, returned undesired, and no resolute Avaunt, even
backed by that magic wand, a cigar, availed to banish it wholly.

The sky cleared cold at eleven o'clock. A sharp wind drew through the
Highlands. As the train rattled round the curve below the tunnel through
Skerrett's Point, Wade could see his skating course of Christmas-Day
with the ladies. Firm ice, glazed smooth by the sudden chill after the
rain, filled the Cove and stretched beyond the Point into the river.

It was treacherous stuff, beautiful to the eyes of a skater, but sure
to be weak, and likely to break up any moment and join the deliberate
headlong drift of the masses in mid-current.

Wade almost dreaded lest his vision should suddenly realize itself,
and he should see his enthusiastic companion of the other day sailing
gracefully along to certain death.

Nothing living, however, was in sight, except here and there a crow,
skipping about in the floating ice