“Pearl,” his voice was low, shaken by the emotion which had overtaken both of them, “do you know that, as far as you and I are concerned, we are the only living human beings in all our world?”

She looked at him and, unknown to herself, her face still held its glow of rapture; her eyes were pools of love.

Her little rill of laughter was broken and shaken as falling water.  “The sheriff didn’t get us, and yet we’re prisoners, prisoners of the snow.”

“And you, my jailer, will you be kind to me?” But there was nothing pleading in his tone.  It rang instead with exultant triumph.

“Why, Pearl”—­a virile note of power as if some long-dreamed-of mastery were his at last swelled like a diapason through his voice—­“we’re in for a thaw, a big thaw, but it will take time to melt down that mountain out there in the crevasse; and you and I are here—­alone—­for a fortnight, at least a fortnight.”  He emphasized the words, lingering over them as if they afforded him delight.

“A fortnight!  Here!  Alone with you!” she cried.  “Never, never.  There must be a way—­” she murmured confusedly and ran to the window to hide her agitation and embarrassment, pulling the curtain hastily aside and looking out unseeingly over the hills.  She was trembling from head to foot.

The wind had risen and was wailing and shrieking over the bare hill and the air was dim with flying snow; but the spring that hours before had kissed her cheek and touched her lips like a song rose now in Pearl’s heart.  She pressed her tightly clasped hands against her breast and closed her eyes.  A new world!  And she and Harry were in it together—­and alone.

CHAPTER XIV

The dawns rose, the suns set, after the avalanche as before, and Pearl and Seagreave, alone in the cabin, isolated from the world of human beings, took up their lives together, together and yet apart, in the great, encompassing silence of this white and winter-locked world.

Winter-locked, yes, but all the mighty, unseen forces of Nature were set toward spring.  Nothing could stop or retard them now.  Under sullen, lowering skies; beneath the blasts which swept down from the peaks; in spite of flying snow; unseen, unsuspected, in the darkness and stillness and warmth of the earth, the transformation was going on.  The tender, young banners of green were almost ready for the decking of the trees, and almost completed was the weaving of pink and blue and lavender carpets of wild flowers for the hillsides.

And the spring that had arisen glorious in Pearl’s heart when she had realized that she and Harry were prisoners of the avalanche was still resurgent.  For the first day or two of their isolation she lived, breathed, moved in the splendor of her heart’s dream.  It encompassed her with the warmth and radiance of a flood of sunshine.