The glass was fine, the silver massive, the linen dainty, Matthews waited faultlessly:  but overhead hung the rough timbers of the wilderness post, across the river faintly could be heard the howling of wolves.  The fare was rice, curry, salt pork, potatoes, and beans; for at this season the game was poor, and the fish hardly yet running with regularity.

Throughout the meal Virginia sat in a singular abstraction.  No conscious thoughts took shape in her mind, but nevertheless she seemed to herself to be occupied in considering weighty matters.  When directly addressed, she answered sweetly.  Much of the time she studied her father’s face.  She found it old.  Those lines were already evident which, when first noted, bring a stab of surprised pain to the breast of a child—­the droop of the mouth, the wrinkling of the temples, the patient weariness of the eyes.  Virginia’s own eyes filled with tears.  The subjective passive state into which a newly born but not yet recognized love had cast her, inclined her to gentleness.  She accepted facts as they came to her.  For the moment she forgot the mere happenings of the day, and lived only in the resulting mood of them all.  The new-comer inspired her no longer with anger nor sorrow, attraction nor fear.  Her active emotions in abeyance, she floated dreamily on the clouds of a new estate.

This very aloofness of spirit disinclined her for the company of the others after the meal was finished.  The Factor closeted himself with Richardson.  The doctor, lighting a cheroot, took his way across to his infirmary.  McDonald, Crane, and Mrs. Cockburn entered the drawing-room and seated themselves near the piano.  Virginia hesitated, then threw a shawl over her head and stepped out on the broad veranda.

At once the vast, splendid beauty of the Northern night broke over her soul.  Straight before her gleamed and flashed and ebbed and palpitated the aurora.  One moment its long arms shot beyond the zenith; the next it had broken and rippled back like a brook of light to its arch over the Great Bear.  Never for an instant was it still.  Its restlessness stole away the quiet of the evening; but left it magnificent.

In comparison with this coruscating dome of the infinite the earth had shrunken to a narrow black band of velvet, in which was nothing distinguishable until suddenly the sky-line broke in calm silhouettes of spruce and firs.  And always the mighty River of the Moose, gleaming, jewelled, barbaric in its reflections, slipped by to the sea.

So rapid and bewildering was the motion of these two great powers—­the river and the sky—­that the imagination could not believe in silence.  It was as though the earth were full of shoutings and of tumults.  And yet in reality the night was as still as a tropical evening.  The wolves and the sledge-dogs answered each other undisturbed; the beautiful songs of the white-throats stole from the forest as divinely instinct as ever with the spirit of peace.