It was bitter cold.  As the trail wound, a quarter of a mile brought them to the dancer’s cabin, by which time her moist breath had coated her face frostily, while his had massed his heavy mustache till conversation was painful.  By the greenish light of the aurora borealis, the quicksilver showed itself frozen hard in the bulb of the thermometer which hung outside the door.  A thousand dogs, in pitiful chorus, wailed their ancient wrongs and claimed mercy from the unheeding stars.  Not a breath of air was moving.  For them there was no shelter from the cold, no shrewd crawling to leeward in snug nooks.  The frost was everywhere, and they lay in the open, ever and anon stretching their trail-stiffened muscles and lifting the long wolf-howl.

They did not talk at first, the man and the woman.  While the maid helped Freda off with her wraps, Floyd Vanderlip replenished the fire; and by the time the maid had withdrawn to an inner room, his head over the stove, he was busily thawing out his burdened upper lip.  After that he rolled a cigarette and watched her lazily through the fragrant eddies.  She stole a glance at the clock.  It lacked half an hour of midnight.  How was she to hold him?  Was he angry for that which she had done?  What was his mood?  What mood of hers could meet his best?  Not that she doubted herself.  No, no.  Hold him she could, if need be at pistol point, till Sitka Charley’s work was done, and Devereaux’s too.

There were many ways, and with her knowledge of this her contempt for the man increased.  As she leaned her head on her hand, a fleeting vision of her own girlhood, with its mournful climacteric and tragic ebb, was vouchsafed her, and for the moment she was minded to read him a lesson from it.  God! it must be less than human brute who could not be held by such a tale, told as she could tell it, but—­bah!  He was not worth it, nor worth the pain to her.  The candle was positioned just right, and even as she thought of these things sacredly shameful to her, he was pleasuring in the transparent pinkiness of her ear.  She noted his eye, took the cue, and turned her head till the clean profile of the face was presented.  Not the least was that profile among her virtues.  She could not help the lines upon which she had been builded, and they were very good; but she had long since learned those lines, and though little they needed, was not above advantaging them to the best of her ability.  The candle began to flicker.  She could not do anything ungracefully, but that did not prevent her improving upon nature a bit, when she reached forth and deftly snuffed the red wick from the midst of the yellow flame.  Again she rested head on hand, this time regarding the man thoughtfully, and any man is pleased when thus regarded by a pretty woman.