hut her out from all before or behind. She stood still for a moment,
and drew in her breath with a sense of intense exhilaration. She was
all by herself in the midst of this new-found world of snow, and the
very solitude had a fascination. It is good sometimes for the spirit
to be alone; strange vague thoughts, half memories, half imaginings,
fill the brain like a full high tide; strong impressions, unfelt and
unknowable in the distraction of human company, force themselves
silently yet persistently upon us; the corporal and the tangible lose
their hard outlines and begin to merge into the in visible--in such
moments the soul grows. It is perhaps one of the disadvantages of a
large family that the members are apt to lack what one might call
spiritual elbow room, the constant close companionship, the fridging
and rubbing of the continual, daily, hourly intercourse, though an
excellent discipline for the temper, leaves scant opportunity for the
development of the individuality. Gwen could not have explained this
in the least, but as she stood in the still quiet of the falling snow,
she felt as if all the little fretting cares and worries and squabbles
and anxieties dropped away into a subordinate place, and she were
viewing life with another range of vision, where the proportions of
things were quite changed.

She walked on, almost as if she were in a dream, without even the
sound of a footstep to break the intense silence. She was now on the
open wold, where there were neither hedges nor walls, but only a few
stones to mark the road from the sedgy, heathery expanse of moor that
stretched on either side. Gwen knew the way so thoroughly that she
thought she could have followed it blindfold. Every rock and boulder
and bush were familiar, and as a rule were so many points along the
daily path to school. Now, however, all the well-known landmarks
seemed to have a strange similarity, and to be merging into one great
white waste, in which tree stump was indistinguishable from stone or
gorse clump. The light was fading rapidly, for the clouds went on
gathering, and the flakes came down ever thicker and faster. So far
Gwen had gone on with the utmost confidence, but now she stopped and
entertained a doubt. She did not recognize the boulder on her right,
and the juniper bush on her left was surely strange.

"I verily believe I've come wrong somehow," she muttered. "There's
nothing for it but to turn back."

She could see her ow