t when it served him to handle a fork, for the
first time since he had been ill.

And so now she was standing beside these great falls, thinking very
deeply. She was disappointed at herself because she did not feel
properly happy and grateful; indeed, she was dropping in her own
estimation. If any one, a month before, had placed before her the
prospect of honest toil among friendly faces, of usefulness that would
benefit her while gaining gratitude from others, she would have deemed
herself the happiest woman in the world. Yes, the world should have
been a very beautiful and kindly place, now that hunger and pain were
eliminated, now that the coming of spring would cause sap to surge up
the trees so that the branches would soon clothe themselves in the
tender glory of new leafage. Her own existence was on the verge of a
fresh new growth that might lead to greater things, and yet she
reproached herself because she could not become conscious of a real
happiness, of a glorious achievement that had been like an unexpected
manna coming to starvelings in a desert. She felt nothing but a quiet
acquiescence in the new conditions and accepted her new destiny with a
sigh.

She did not realize yet that in her soul a new longing had come, that
would not be denied.

She returned slowly to the shack where Hugo sat in an armchair brought
all the way from Carcajou on Stefan's sled. His arm was still in a
sling. It was fortunate that it was the left one, for he was very
busily engaged in writing.

The girl waited for some time, leaning against the doorpost and
watching some chipping sparrows that had recently arrived and were
thinking hard about nest-building in the neighboring bushes.

The weeds and grasses and wild flowers were beginning to peep out of
the ground, with the haste that is peculiar to northern lands where
life is strenuous during the few months of warm fair weather. The
tender hues of the burgeoning birches and poplars, streaked with the
gleaming silver of their trunks, were casting soft notes upon the
strong greens of the conifers and the indigo of their shadows. In the
spray of the falls, to her left, a tiny rainbow seemed to dance, and
the loud song of the rushing waters was like the call of some great
loving voice. She reflected that she would have to go again to a place
in which many people lived. It would not be like a city. The same
trees and the same waters and the same flowers would be there, very
close a