before one left alone here
would go mad. And would the mad one shout shrieking defiance at the
silence?--or go about on tip-toe, finger laid across his lips?

The morning wore on. At one moment she was plunged into a deep, chaotic
abyss that was neither unconsciousness nor reverie, and yet which
strangely partook of both. A moment later she was vaguely aware of a
difference; it was as though a presence, though what sort she could not
tell, had approached, were near her, all about her. That instant of
uncertainty was brief, gone in a flash. She turned and a little glad cry
broke from her lips. A streak of sunshine lay across the rocks at the
cave's mouth.

It was like the visit of an angel. More than that, like the face of a
beloved friend. She ran to her canvas and looked out. There was a rift
in the sombre roofing of clouds; she saw a strip of clean blue sky
through which a splendid sun shone. And yet the snow was falling on all
hands, snow bright with a new shining whiteness. She watched that little
strip of heaven's blue eagerly and anxiously; was it widening? Or were
the clouds crowding over it again?

But though this seemed the one consideration of importance in all the
world for her just now, in another instant it was swept from her mind,
forgotten. Far below her, down in the gorge, she saw something moving!
And that something, ploughing laboriously through depths and drifts of
loose fluffy snow, was a man. Now her thoughts raced again. It was King.
He was coming back to her.... No; it was not King; it was Swen Brodie!
She began to tremble violently. She had barely strength to draw back, to
pull the canvas closer to the rocks, to strive to hide. If Brodie came
now, if Brodie found her here, alone----That fear which is in all
female hearts, that boundless terror of the one creature who is her
greatest protector, her vilest enemy, more dreaded than a wild beast,
gripped her and shook her and swiftly beat the strength out of her. But,
fascinated, she clung to the rocks and watched.

The man struggling weakly against the pitiless wilderness, wallowing in
the snow, seemed to make his way along the gorge inch by inch. He
carried something on his back, something white under the falling snow
which whitened his hat and labouring shoulders. A sack with something in
it, something to which he clung tenaciously. How he floundered and
battled against the high-heaped white stuff about him which held him
back, which mounted