Some one drew a long breath, audible in that room, where tragedy held them in silence.  It was as though those two lost ones lay stark and cold in their midst; as though this woman was looking down upon her son.  But when the silence had tightened their nerves, she spoke again with the quiet of utter hopelessness.

“I must ask you to help me get down the mountain somehow.  If the railroad is in operation I shall return home.  I wish to say that while I shall carry with me the bitterest sorrow of my life, I shall carry also a deep sense of the goodness and the bravery—­”

Proud, yes.  But proud as she was she could not go on.  She turned abruptly and went back into the room where Kate slept heavily.  A little later the sound of stifled sobbing, infinitely sad, went out to the men who sat with cooling pipes in their palms, constrained to silence still by the infinite sadness of motherhood bereaved.

“Tomorrow morning we better start in clearing the road,” one muttered at last.  “Somebody can ride down and have a team come up after her.”

“It’s no use to hunt any longer,” another observed uneasily.  “The snow would cover up—­”

“Sh-sh-sh!” warned the professor, and nodded his head toward the room door.

In her own home, that had been closed for months, Mrs. Singleton Corey folded her black veil up over the crown of her black hat and picked up the telephone.  Her white hair was brushed up from her forehead in a smooth, cloudy fashion that had in it no more than a hint of marcelle waving.  Her face was almost as white as her hair, and her eyes were black-shadowed and sunken.  She sat down wearily upon the chair beside the telephone stand, waited dull-eyed for Central to answer, and then called up her doctor.  Her voice was calm—­too calm.  It was absolutely colorless.

Her doctor, on the other hand, became agitated to the point of stuttering when he realized who was speaking to him.  His disjointed questions grated on Mrs. Singleton Corey, who was surfeited with emotion and who craved nothing so much as absolute peace.

“Yes, certainly I am back,” she drawled with a shade of impatience.  “Just now—­from the depot....  No, I am feeling very well—­No, I have not read the papers, and I do not intend to....  Really, doctor, I can see no necessity of your coming out here.  I am perfectly all right, I assure you.  I shall call up the maids and let them know that I am home, but first I have called you, just to ease your mind—­providing, of course, that you have one.  You seem to have lost it quite suddenly....”

She listened, and caught her breath.  Her lips whitened, and her nostrils flared suddenly with what may have been anger.  “No, doctor ...  I did not—­find—­Jack.”  She forced herself to say it.  He would have to know, she reflected.

She was about to add something that would make her statement sound less bald, but the doctor had hung up, muttering something she did not catch.  She waited, holding the receiver to her ear until Central, in that supercilious voice we all dislike so much, asked crisply, “Are you waiting?” Then Mrs. Singleton Corey also hung up her receiver and sat there idly gazing at her folded hands.