tering steps or
stood whispering. The straight edge of their outline, the unbroken
solidity of their bulk, told her they were wrapped in the same blanket,
a custom in the Indian lover's courtship. Their backs were toward her,
the two heads rising from the blanket's folds, showing as a rounded
pyramidal finish. As she looked they paced beyond the shadow into the
full unobscured light, and she saw that the higher head was dark, the
other fair, crowned with a circlet of shining hair.

Her heart gave an astounded leap. Her first instinct was to draw back,
her second to stand where she was, seemly traditions overwhelmed in
amazement. The whispering ceased, the heads inclined to each other,
the light one drooping backward, the dark one leaning toward it, till
they rested together for a long, still moment. Then they separated,
the woman drawing herself from the blanket and with a whispered word
stealing away, a furtive figure flitting through light and shade to the
McMurdo tents. The man turned and walked to the fire, and Susan saw it
was Zavier. He threw on a brand and in its leaping ray stood
motionless, looking at the flame, a slight, fixed smile on his lips.

She crept back to her bed and lay there with her heart throbbing and
her eyes on the edges of moonlight that slipped in over the trampled
sage leaves. Zavier was on sentry duty that night, and she could hear
the padding of his step as he moved back and forth through the sleeping
camp. On the dark walls of the tent the vision she had seen kept
repeating itself, and as it returned upon her mental sight, new
questions surged into her mind. A veil had been raised, and she had
caught a glimpse of something in life, a new factor in the world, she
had never known of. The first faint comprehension of it, the first
stir of sympathy with it, crept toward her understanding and tried to
force an entrance. She pushed it out, feeling frightened, feeling as
if it were an intruder, that once admitted would grow dominant and
masterful, and she would never be her own again.

CHAPTER III

The next morning Susan could not help stealing inquiring looks at Lucy.
Surely the participant in such a nocturnal adventure must bear some
signs of it upon her face. Lucy had suddenly become a disturbing and
incomprehensible problem. In trying to readjust her conception of the
practical and energetic girl, Susan found herself confronted with the
artifices of a world-old, femin