king about something that happened a long time ago. "You had to say
it. It's true. I knew it well enough. I just thought I'd ask you."

"Do you want me to very much--want me to love you?"

"Don't talk any more about it."

"Neil, suppose I should marry Willard?"

"I suppose you will."

"You won't mind too much?"

"What call would I have to mind? Who am I? What am I?"

He laughed again, the same hard and bitter laugh, and struck out faster,
gripping her hands hard, so that it hurt, but looking away from her
across the dead, even white of the trackless snow. There was a pain not
to be comforted or reached in his beautiful eyes. It had nothing to do
with her.

"Neil, wouldn't you care at all?" she said jealously.

"Care?"

"If I married Willard?"

"Oh, yes."

"Neil, do you love me?"

He did not answer or seem to hear, and now Judith gave up asking
questions. Carried along at his side in silence, she listened to the
muffled creak of the skates on the snow-covered ice, hushed by the
steady and sleepy sound of it, half closing her eyes. His left arm was
behind her shoulders now, to support her, and she could feel it there,
warm and strong. Breathing when he breathed, her heart beating in time
with his, swinging far to right and left, tense with the stroke or
yielding deliciously in the recovery, caught in the rhythm of it as if
some force outside them both were carrying them on like one, and not
two, and would never let them go, Judith yet felt far away from him.

She was alone in the heart of a snow-covered world, but she was growing
content to be alone. She looked up at his white, set face with wide and
fearless eyes, while the lure of unexplored and unseen ice invited them
all around, and the gray and brooding sky shut them in closer and
closer.

"Neil," she said softly, not caring now whether he answered or heard, "I
wish we needn't ever go back. I love to-day."

Not long after this Judith and Neil went snow-shoeing one Saturday
afternoon by special appointment, an epoch-making event for them. Judith
did not often walk with him or take him driving when the sleigh was
entrusted to her. She was not often seen with him. With quartette
practice and committee work for the dramatic club and other official
pretexts for the time they spent together, Willard was not jealous yet,
though the winter was almost over, and the treasury of dreams was
filling fast.

But this time she made an engagement with Neil as o