he air about her ears, saw the black gulf from
which the roar of the river boomed up at her and her skis rose to the
take-off she had chosen.

As never before in all her life did the girl's will call upon the
muscles of her body. Her hands far out now, like the still pinions of
some strange being of a strange white world, her lithe body as tense as
wire, she gathered her strength, felt her body rising as the skis
slipped up the short slope of the mound, knew that in one flying second
there lay both success and death. At the very instant, when, had she
let herself go, she would be slipping down to the water that was
grinding at the rocks, she leaped.

Higher and higher she rose in the air, carried onward, upward by the
impetus of her wild race and by the slight aid of her take-off had
given her. Higher yet and further out although it seemed to her still
heart that her body was hanging motionless, that it was the earth
leaping beneath her, flying backward, rushing away, hurling the chasm
of the river under her. She did not look down; it might have meant
death to look down. She kept her eyes fastened now upon the far bank,
the place where she sought to land, where she must throw herself
forward to avoid slipping back.

And yet she saw the black gulf under her. It was too black, too wide,
too full of shrieking menace for her not to see it even while she did
not look at it. She was hanging still in air, it was rushing at her,
there was an instant filled with eternity. And then, Wayne's name upon
her lips, she had described the great arc, she had struck six feet from
the treacherous margin on the far side, her skis were running smoothly
under her, at first swiftly, then slowly, and a glad cry of
thankfulness broke from her lips.

She had not even fallen, she did not have to hurl herself prone to
clutch at the snow with her fingers. She sped on, came slowly to a
standstill and then her heart leaping, her blood racing, her eyes
bright and wet she was over the ridge and speeding forward again, the
roar of the river lost to her ears, the form of a man bringing a horse
out of a snow surrounded barn in her eyes.

He cried out as he saw her racing across the snow to him, cried out in
wonder. He dropped his horse's rope and turned to meet her. She saw
that he was still on his skis, saw too that not a thousand yards beyond
the house four men were coming on swiftly.

"Wanda!"

"Wayne." She had come close enough to