ltran's breast. And all that
evening, as the sudden heavy clouds drive down and quench sunset and
starlight, while they sit about a great fire, Beltran keeps her at his
side and Ray maintains his place, and within there is light and love,
and without the sand trembles to the shock of sound and the thunder of
the surf, and the heaven is full of the wildly flying blast of the
Norther.

Still, as Vivia gazed into the silent mirror, the salient points of her
life started up as if memory held a torch to them in their dark
recesses, and another picture printed its frosty _spiculae_ upon the gray
surface of the glass before her. No ardent arch of Southern noontide
now, no wealth of flower and leaf, no pomp of regnant summer, but winter
has darkened down over sad Northern countries, and white Arctic splendor
hedges a lake about with the beauty of incomparable radiance; the trees
whose branches overhang the verge are foamy fountains, frozen as they
fall; distantly beyond them the crisp upland fields stretch their snowy
sparkle to touch the frigid-flashing sapphire of the sky, and bluer than
the sky itself their shadows fall about them; every thorn, every stem,
is set, a spike of crusted lustre in its icy mail; the tingling air
takes the breath in silvery wreaths; and wherever the gay garment of a
skater breaks the monotone with a gleam of crimson or purple, the
shining feet beneath chisel their fantastic curves upon a floor that is
nothing but one glare of crystal sheen. And here, hero of the scene,
glides Beltran, master of the Northern art as school-days made him,
skates as of old some young Viking skated, all his being bubbling in a
lofty glee, with blue eyes answering this icy brilliance as they dazzle
back from the tawny countenance, with every muscle rippling grace and
vigor to meet the proud volition, lithely cutting the air, swifter than
the swallow's wing in its arrowy precision, careless as the floating
flake in effortless motion, skimming along the lucid sheathing that
answers his ringing heel with a tune of its own, and swaying in his
almost aerial medium, lightly, easily, as the swimming fish sways to the
currents of the tide. Scoring whitely their tracery of intricate lines,
the groups go by in whorls, in angles, in sweeping circles, and the ice
shrinks beneath them; here a fairy couple slide along, waving and bowing
and swinging together; far away some recluse in his pleasure sports
alone with folded arms, careeni