From being lightning-swift, thought became a laborious, drugged process; her excited mind had harboured throngs of vivid visions; she had known a period of over-active mental stimulation; she had seen, as in the actual flesh, Mark King ploughing through the snow, going over ridges, pushing on and on and on.  Always further away, driving on through limitless distances.  She had seen him fall, his body crashing down a sheer precipice; she had seen him lying, his face turned up, the snowflakes falling, falling, falling, covering it....  She had seen him going on again; she had seen him breaking his way to the open, getting back among other men, falling exhausted, but calling upon them to go back to her.  She had seen men hurrying; dog-sleds harnessed; packs of provisions; men on snow-shoes.  She had seen them coming toward her across the miles.  Some one else was coming, too.  It was big Swen Brodie, his face horrible.  There was a rabble at his back.  It was a race between these men and those other men.  She had felt that Brodie was putting out a terrible hand toward her; she had seen other men leap upon him, dragging him back....  King had returned; King and Brodie were struggling....  Then again she saw King, fighting his way through the snow, going for help.  She had tried to reason; he could be only a few miles away....

But at last a tired brain refused to create more of these swift pictures.  She stared out and did not think.  She merely felt the weight of the silence, the weight of utter loneliness.  With dragging feet she returned to her fire and looked into the coals, and from them to the further dark, and from it back to the pale light about her canvas.  She sank into a condition of lethargy.  The silence had worked a sort of hypnosis in her.  Briefly, in her wide-opened eyes there was no light of interest.  Vaguely, as though she had no great personal concern in the matter, she wondered how long it would be before one left alone here would go mad.  And would the mad one shout shrieking defiance at the silence?—­or go about on tip-toe, finger laid across his lips?

The morning wore on.  At one moment she was plunged into a deep, chaotic abyss that was neither unconsciousness nor reverie, and yet which strangely partook of both.  A moment later she was vaguely aware of a difference; it was as though a presence, though what sort she could not tell, had approached, were near her, all about her.  That instant of uncertainty was brief, gone in a flash.  She turned and a little glad cry broke from her lips.  A streak of sunshine lay across the rocks at the cave’s mouth.

It was like the visit of an angel.  More than that, like the face of a beloved friend.  She ran to her canvas and looked out.  There was a rift in the sombre roofing of clouds; she saw a strip of clean blue sky through which a splendid sun shone.  And yet the snow was falling on all hands, snow bright with a new shining whiteness.  She watched that little strip of heaven’s blue eagerly and anxiously; was it widening?  Or were the clouds crowding over it again?