Lying, wakeful through the long hours, staring wide-eyed out of the little curtainless window into the thick darkness, thick enough to seem palpable; the memory of how, on that far-off day she had passed long hours with her nose flattened against the window of the dingy little lodging-house drawing-room watching the wonder of the wind-lashed sea, came back to her with extraordinary vividness.

The spectacle had filled her with a sort of terrified exultation.  She had longed to go out and stand on the wind-buffeted pier and take her part in this saturnalia of the elements.  She had something of the same feeling now; a longing to leave her bed and go out onto the windswept prairie.

Strangely enough, she had no sensation of fatigue or weariness either bodily or mentally.  Her mind, indeed, seemed extraordinarily active.  Little petty details of her childhood and of her life with Miss Wickham, long forgotten, such as the day the gardener had cut his thumb, trooped through her mind in an endless procession.  She had a strange feeling that she would never sleep again.

But just as the blackness without seemed turning into heavy grayness, lulled possibly by the wind which had moderated its violence and had now sunk to a moan not unpleasant, and by the rythmic breathing of the sleeping man at her side, she fell asleep.

For several hours she must have slept heavily, indeed.  For when she awoke, it was to find the place at her side empty.  Hurriedly dressing herself, she went out into the living-room.  That was empty, too.  But the lamp was lighted, the kettle was singing merrily on the stove and the fire was burning brightly.  And outside was a whirling veil of snow which made it impossible to see beyond the length of one’s arm.

Had she been marooned on an island in the ultimate ocean of the Antartic, she could not have felt more cut off from the world she knew.  Well, it was better so.

She wondered what had become of Frank.  Surely on a day like this there could be nothing to do outside; and even if there were, nothing so imperative as to take him away before he had had his breakfast.  She felt a little hurt at his leaving without a word.

Evidently, he expected to return soon, however.  The table was laid for two.  She felt her face crimson as she saw that there was but one cup left.  One of them must drink from one of those horrible tin cans.  She did not ask herself which one it would be.

Partly to occupy herself and to take her thoughts away from the recollection of the events of the evening before, and partly prompted by a desire to have everything in readiness against her husband’s return, she busied herself with the preparations for breakfast.

There were some eggs and a filch of bacon which they had brought from Winnipeg.  She would make some toast, too.  Very likely he didn’t care for it, they certainly never had it at Gertie’s, but in her house——­ She smiled to think how quickly, in her mind, she had taken possession.