The light from the fire streamed through the room and Pearl, cheered and restored more by that homely and familiar radiance than by any words of comfort he might have uttered, gradually sank further and further back in her chair and presently closed her eyes.  It seemed to him that she slept.  At first her rest was fitful, broken by exclamations and starts, but each time that she opened her eyes she saw the familiar and unchanged surroundings, and Seagreave sitting near her; and, reassured, her sleep became more natural and restful.

When she awoke it was to find herself alone.  Seagreave had left, but she could hear him moving about in the next room, near at hand if she needed him.  He was evidently bringing in some logs for the fire.

“As if nothing had happened,” she muttered, “and things will go on just the same.  We shall eat; we shall sleep.  How can it be?”

She got up and began to walk up and down the room.  She was young, she was strong, and the shock of those few moments of wonder and horror had almost worn off.  Her active brain was alert and normal again, and she thought deeply as she walked to and fro, considering all possible phases of her present situation.

Then, ceasing to pace back and forth, she leaned against the window and looked out.  The strange, new world lay before her, an earth bereft of its familiar forests, and which must send forth from its teeming heart a new growth of tender, springtime shoots to cover its nakedness.  And as she gazed the sun burst through the gray clouds and poured down upon the wide, bare hillside an unbroken flood of golden splendor.

Hearing a slight sound behind her, she turned quickly.  Seagreave had entered and, approaching the window, stood looking at the white sloping plain without.

“I couldn’t chop any more wood,” he said.  “It seemed too commonplace after this thing that we have seen.  But you—­how are you?”

“I’m all right,” she returned.  But she did not meet his eyes; her black lashes lay long on her cheek; her cheek burned.  She realized in a confused way that there was some change in their relative positions.  She had always felt because of his reticence, his withdrawal into self, his diffidence in approaching her, easily mistress of any situation which might arise between them; but since those moments when they two had gazed upon the avalanche, and she in her terror had flung herself upon his breast, and had wrapped her arms about him and buried her face in his shoulder, he had assumed not only the tone but the manner of authority and had adopted again a natural habit of command, dropped or laid aside from indifference or inertia, but instinctively resumed when through some powerful feeling he became again his normal self, alive and alert, vigorous and enthusiastic.  It was as if he had suddenly awakened to a whole world of new possibilities and new opportunities.

Beneath his long, steady gaze her own eyelids fluttered and fell; her cheeks flushed a deeper rose; her heart beat madly.  She was furious at herself for these revealing weaknesses, and yet she, too, was conscious of new, undreamed-of possibilities, sweet, poignantly sweet.