the thing
would not have been such an abortion of what should have been. But she
was not that. Sweet-faced, with something of unusual beauty still in
her pale cheeks and starving eyes--trembling at his approach and a
slave in his presence--she was, like his dogs, the PROPERTY of The
Brute. And the woman had a baby. One had already died; and it was the
thought that this one might die, as the other had died, that brought at
times the new flash of fire into her dark eyes.

"Le bon Dieu--I pray to the Blessed Angels--I swear you SHALL live!"
she would cry to it at times, hugging it close to her breast. And it
was at these times that the fire came into her eyes, and her pale
cheeks flushed with a smouldering bit of the flame that had once been
her beauty. "Some day--SOME DAY--"

But she never finished, even to the child, what was in her mind.
Sometimes her dreams were filled with visions. The world was still
young, and SHE was not old. She was thinking of that as she stood
before the cracked bit of mirror in the cabin, brushing out her hair,
that was black and shining and so long that it fell to her hips. Of her
beauty her hair had remained. It was defiant of The Brute. And deep
back in her eyes, and in her face, there were still the living, hidden
traces of her girlhood heritage ready to bloom again if Fate, mending
its error at last, would only take away forever the crushing presence
of the Master. She stood a little longer before the bit of glass when
she heard the crunching of footsteps in the snow outside.

Swiftly what had been in her face was gone. Le Beau had been away on
his trapline since yesterday, and his return filled her with the old
dread. Twice he had caught her before the mirror and had called her
vile names for wasting her time in admiring herself when she might have
been scraping the fat from his pelts. The second time he had sent her
reeling back against the wall, and had broken the mirror until the bit
she treasured now was not much larger than her two slim hands. She
would not be caught again. She ran with the glass to the place where
she kept it in hiding, and then quickly she wove the heavy strands of
her hair into a braid. The strange, dead look of fear and foreboding
closed like a veil over the secrets her eyes had disclosed to herself.
She turned, as she always turned in her woman's hope and yearning, to
greet him when he entered.

The Brute entered, a dark and surly monster. He was in a wicked