leese was gone. He closed the door behind him,
scarce believing his eyes. Then at the far end of the room he saw a
curtain, undulating slightly as if from the movement of a person on the
other side of it.

"Meleese!" he called softly.

White and dripping with snow, his face bloodless in the tense excitement
of the moment, he stood with his arms half reaching out when the curtain
was thrust aside and the girl stood before him. At first she did not
recognize him in his ghostly storm-covered disguise. But before the
startled cry that was on her lips found utterance the fear that had
blanched her face gave place to a swift sweeping flood of color. For a
space there was no word between them as they stood separated by the
breadth of the room, Howland with his arms held out to her in pleading
silence, Meleese with her hands clutched to her bosom, her throat
atremble with strange sobbing notes that made no more sound than the
fluttering of a bird's wing.

And Howland, as he came across the room to her, found no words to
say--none of the things that he had meant to whisper to her, but drew
her to him and crushed her close to his breast, knowing that in this
moment nothing could tell her more eloquently than the throbbing of his
own heart, the passionate pressure of his face to her face, of his great
love which seemed to stir into life the very silence that
encompassed them.

It was a silence broken after a moment by a short choking cry, the
quick-breathing terror of a face turned suddenly up to him robbed of its
flush and quivering with a fear that still found no voice in words. He
felt the girl's arms straining against him for freedom; her eyes were
filled with a staring, questioning horror, as though his presence had
grown into a thing of which she was afraid. The change was tonic to him.
This was what he had expected---the first terror at his presence, the
struggle against his will, and there surged back over him the forces he
had reserved for this moment. He opened his arms and Meleese slipped
from them, her hands clutched again in the clinging drapery of
her bosom.

"I have come for you, Meleese," he said as calmly as though his arrival
had been expected. "Jean is my prisoner. I forced him to drive me to the
old cabin up on the mountain, and he is waiting there with the dogs. We
will start back to-night--_now_." Suddenly he sprang to her again, his
voice breaking in a low pleading cry. "My God, don't you see now how I