her geography lessons, and was soon to see with her own eyes.  She thought of the uncompanioned beauty of the streams, as it would be when the thunder of the train had gone by, of its distant sources in the wild, and the loneliness of its long, long journey.  A little shiver stole upon her, the old tremor of man in presence of a nature not yet tamed to his needs, not yet identified with his feelings, still full therefore of stealthy and hostile powers, creeping unawares upon his life.

“This champagne is not nearly as good as last night,” said Philip discontentedly.  “Yerkes must really try for something better at Winnipeg.  When do we arrive?”

“Oh, some time to-morrow evening.”

“What a blessing we’re going to bed!” said the boy, lighting his cigarette.  “You won’t be able to bother me about lakes, Lisa.”

But he smiled at her as he spoke, and Elizabeth was so enchanted to notice the gradual passing away of the look of illness, the brightening of the eye, and slight filling out of the face, that he might tease her as he pleased.

Within an hour Philip Gaddesden was stretched on a comfortable bed sound asleep.  The two servants had made up berths in the dining-room; Elizabeth’s maid slept in the saloon.  Elizabeth herself, wrapped in a large cloak, sat awhile outside, waiting for the first sight of Lake Superior.

It came at last.  A gleam of silver on the left—­a line of purple islands—­frowning headlands in front—­and out of the interminable shadow of the forests, they swept into a broad moonlight.  Over high bridges and the roar of rivers, threading innumerable bays, burrowing through headlands and peninsulas, now hanging over the cold shining of the water, now lost again in the woods, the train sped on its wonderful way.  Elizabeth on her platform at its rear was conscious of no other living creature.  She seemed to be alone with the night and the vastness of the lake, the awfulness of its black and purple coast.  As far as she could see, the trees on its shores were still bare; they had temporarily left the spring behind; the North seemed to have rushed upon her in its terror and desolation.  She found herself imagining the storms that sweep the lake in winter, measuring her frail life against the loneliness and boundlessness around her.  No sign of man, save in the few lights of these scattered stations; and yet, for long, her main impression was one of exultation in man’s power and skill, which bore her on and on, safe, through the conquered wilderness.

Gradually, however, this note of feeling slid down into something much softer and sadder.  She became conscious of herself, and her personal life; and little by little her exultation passed into yearning; her eyes grew wet.  For she had no one beside her with whom to share these secret thoughts and passions—­these fresh contacts with life and nature.  Was it always to be so?  There was in her a longing, a “sehnsucht,” for she knew not what.