longest steps you ever saw. That's
when I ran to collect my gun--it was a little farther up the bank than
my hides, worse luck!"

Even Bella had forgotten her bitterness in listening, and Pete's parted
lips were those of an excited child. Sylvie leaned forward in her chair,
her cheeks tingling, her hands locked. Hugh had thrown himself into the
action of his story; his face was slightly contorted as though sighting
along a gun-barrel, his arm raised, the ungainliness of his deformity
strongly accentuated. He was not looking at Sylvie; true to his nature
and his habit, he had forgotten every one but that Hugh of adventure
and of romance, the one companion of his soul. None of them was watching
Sylvie, and when she gave a sharp, little cry, a queer start and then
sat utterly still, Hugh accepted it--they all accepted it--as a tribute
to his story-telling powers.

But Sylvie, leaning her elbows on her knees, raised trembling hands to
her eyes and hid them. She sat very still, very white, while the story
went on, vividly imagined, picturesquely told. When it was over, and the
mother bear, after a worthy struggle, defeated, Hugh looked about for
his applause. It came, grudgingly from Bella, eagerly from Pete--and
from Sylvie in a sudden extravagant clapping of hands, a ripple of high,
excited laughter, and a collapse in her chair. She had fainted in a limp
little heap.

She came to in an instant, but seemed bewildered and, unprotesting,
permitted herself to be carried to bed. She declared she felt quite well
again and wanted only to be alone. She repeated this moaningly. "Oh, to
be alone!"

Hugh seated himself on the end of the bed and kissed her forehead and
her hand, but it quivered under his lips and was drawn away.

He came back into the living-room with a pale, bewildered face.

CHAPTER XI

Next day there came out of that room a new Sylvie or rather a dozen new
Sylvies: a flighty witch of a Sylvie who tempted her blindness with rash
ventures about the rooms and even out of doors, who laughed at Hugh and
led him on, and drew him out to his maddest improvisations, who treated
Pete to snubs and tauntings that stung like so many little whips; and
again a Sylvie who was still and timid and a trifle furtive, who
rarely spoke, but sat with locked hands in an attitude of desperate
concentration and seemed to be planning something secret and dangerous;
and then there was a haughty, touch-me-not Sylvie; and a Syl