?
I always feel as if my heart melted with the snow when spring comes--a
wild, free, tumbling feeling of softness and escape."

She sighed. "Yes--if only I could see. I miss my eyes out of doors more
than in the house. Does snow-blindness really last so long? Perhaps it
was the nervous shock and the exhaustion as much as the glare. I am sure
it all will just go suddenly some day. I stare and stare sometimes, and
I feel as if I might see--almost."

He frowned. "You mustn't miss anything when you have me, Sylvie. Do you
suppose I miss anything, now that I have you? My career, my old friends,
my old life, my liberty, the world? That for everything!" He snapped his
fingers. "If only I have you."

"You love me so much," she answered, as though she were oppressed, "it
frightens me sometimes."

"When you are wholly mine--" he began. "Well, wait till we get to the
top of the mountain; there I'll tell you all my plans. They're as big
and beautiful as the world. I feel, with your love, that I can move
mountains. I can fashion the world close to my heart's desire. We'll
leave this blank spot and go to some lovely, warm, smiling land where
the water is turquoise and the sky aquamarine--"

"And perhaps my sight will come back." It was almost a prayer.

He did not answer. They had come to a sharp sudden ascent. He took her
in his arms, scrambled across the tumbled rocks, and set her down beside
him on the great granite crest that rose like the edge of a gray wave.
The clean, wild wind smote her and shook her and pressed back her hair
and dress. She clung to him.

"Is it steep? Are we on the edge of a cliff, Hugh? I'm not afraid!"

"We're on the very top of the world," he told her breathlessly, his
voice filled with a sense of awe, "our world, Sylvie, I'm master here.
There's no greater mind than my own in all that dark green circle. It's
pines, pines, pines to the edge of the earth, Sylvie, an ocean of purple
and green--silver where the wind moves, treading down, like Christ
walking on the water. And the sky is all gray, like stone."

"Can you see the flat, the cabin?"

"The flat, yes--a round green spot, way down there behind us. The cabin?
No. That's in a hollow, you may be sure, well out of sight. I'm an
outlaw, dearest, remember. There's a curve of the river, like a silver
elbow. And Sylvie, up above us, an eagle is turning and turning in a
huge circle. He thinks he's king. But, Sylvie, it's our world--yours and
mine.