Pearl had rapidly acquired proficiency in her new accomplishment, and she and Seagreave had covered several miles when, on their return, they paused to rest a bit in the little bower of stunted pines.  Here Seagreave cut some branches from the trees for them to sit on and, gathering some dry, fallen boughs and cones, built a fire.

They enjoyed this a few moments in silence and then Pearl spoke.  “Why,” she asked with her usual directness, “why did you get up and walk up and down the room last night when Hughie was playing?  What was it in his music that made you forget all of us and even, as you said, forget that you were not in your own cabin?”

“That was stupid of me and rude, too,” he said compunctiously.  “Something that he was playing called up so vivid a memory that I forgot everything.”

There was a quick gleam in her eyes; she was resentful of memories that could make him forget her very presence, hers.  “What was it you were thinking of?” she asked.  Her voice was low.

He looked out over the snow before he answered.  “A girl,” he said, and cast another handful of pine cones upon the fire.

She did not speak nor move, and yet her whole being was instinct with a sudden tense attention.  “Yes, a girl,” she said insistently.  “What was she like?” the words leaped from her, voicing themselves almost without her volition.

He sighed and appeared to speak with some effort.  “It was long ago,” he said.  “She was like violets or white English roses.”

“And did you love her?” she asked, that soft tenseness still in her voice, “and did she love you?”

“I suppose every man has his ideal of woman, perhaps unconsciously to himself, and she was mine.”

He sighed again and she glanced quickly at him from the corners of her eyes with a half scornful smile upon her lips.  She knew that she did not suggest violets, shy and fragrant and hidden under their own green leaves; neither was there anything in the mountains to suggest the gardens in which roses grew.  But he had left the violets and English roses long ago, because of that spirit of restlessness within him, and finally he had come to these wild, savage mountains and was content here, where it was difficult even to picture the calm and repose of the gardens he had left.  He had said that he did not know why he had come, but Pearl did.  She never doubted it.  It was the call of her heart across the world to him, seeking him, reaching him, drawing him to her.

“And does it make you unhappy to think of her now?” she asked still softly.

“No,” he said, “no, not now.  But last night something in the music caused the years to drop away and I was back there again and she rose before me.  Really, I felt her very presence.  I saw her as plainly as I see you now.”