tion. What strength must have been mine! what a frenzied, frantic
effort I must have put forth! what a madness of resolve must have
nerved my limbs to have carried her up such a place as that! In
comparison with this last supreme effort all the rest of that journey
seemed weak and commonplace.

Rousing myself at last from the profound abstraction into which I had
fallen, I turned and looked at my companion.

She was standing close beside me; her hands hung in front of her,
closed over one another; her head was slightly bent forward; her eyes
were opened wide, and fixed steadfastly upon the river at the line
which we might have traversed; and there was in her face such rapt
attention, such deep and all-absorbed meditation, that I saw her
interest in this scene was equal to mine. But there was more than
interest There was that in her face which showed that the incidents of
that journey were now passing before her mind; her face even now
assumed that old expression which it had borne when first I saw her--it
was white, horror-stricken, and full of fear--the face that had fixed
itself on my memory after that day of days--the face of my Lady of the
Ice.

She did not know that I was looking at her, and devouring her with my
gaze. Her eyes wandered over the water and toward the shore. I heard
her quick breathing, and saw a sudden shudder pass through her, and her
hands clutch one another more tightly in a nervous clasp, as she came
to that place where she had fallen last. She looked at that spot on the
dark water for a long tame, and in visible agitation. What had taken
place after she had fallen she well knew, for I had told it all on my
first visit to her house, but it was only from my account that she knew
it. Yet here were the visible illustrations of my story--the dark
river, the high, precipitous bank. In all these, as in all around, she
could see what I had done for her.

Suddenly, with a start, she raised her head, and, turning, looked full
upon me. It was a wild, eager, wistful, questioning look--her large,
lustrous eyes thrilled me through with their old power; I saw in her
face something that set my heart throbbing with feverish madness. It
was a mute appeal--a face turned toward me as though to find out by
that one eager, piercing, penetrating glance, something that she longed
to know. At the same time there was visible in her face the sign of
another feeling contending with this--that same constraint, and shy