The snow fell more and more thickly, covering her as she stood with a fine, soft mantle of white.  She had heard the men that afternoon saying they had seen signs of the winter break-up, and she wondered at it now, looking about the frozen, buried, beautiful valley and up to the frozen towering mountains, breathing in the cold air, as pure as the ether itself.  It seemed to her that spring was as remote and unreal and impossible an imagination of the heart as a child’s fairy-tale.

Then suddenly, bursting out of the dimming distance, close in front of her, flying low, silently, strongly, a pair of wild geese went winging off towards the north, their gray shapes the only moving thing in all the frost-held world.

Marise drew a great breath of delight in their strong and purposeful vitality.  She looked after them, her heart rising and singing with comradely pride in them.  She would have liked to shout an exultant greeting after them, “Hurrah!”

They went beating off, fast and straight, for their unseen destination, while, treading the velvet-like snow-drifts with her strong free tread, Marise went home.

[Illustration:  Music]

VIII

March 2.

It was the first warm day of the year.  The hard-frozen ruts of the road thawed on top and glistened.  The snow-banks shrank visibly from one hour to the next under a warm wind and a hazy sun.  The mountains were unbelievably beautiful and seductive in a shimmer of blue and silver.  The children had brought home a branch of pussy-willows, and as Marise and Neale stood for a moment at the open door breathing in the new softness, they saw Toucle, old and stooped and shabby, her reticule bag bulging, her flat feet in enormous overshoes plodding up the road towards the mountain.

They smiled at one another.  It was in truth the first day of spring.  Marise said, after a pause, “Do you know what she goes off for?”

Neale shook his head with a wide indifference as to the reason.  “Because she’s an Injun,” he conjectured casually.

“She told me once,” said Marise, with a sudden wonder what Neale would think of that glimpse into the old mystic’s mind, how he would (for she knew beforehand he would) escape the wistfulness which struck at her even now, at the thought of that door to peace.  She repeated to him word for word what Toucle had told her on that hot August day.

Neale gave her his usual careful attention.  Marise thought to herself, “Neale is the only person I ever knew who could listen to other people’s ideas.”  But when she finished he made no comment.  She asked him, “Did you ever think that old carven-image had that in her?  How profound a disdain for us busy-about-nothing white people she must have!”

Neale nodded.  “Most likely.  Everybody has a good deal of disdain for other people’s ideals.”