“I’m afraid it will be difficult,” Helen answered.

The doctor’s eyes twinkled.  “So I imagine, but it’s your job.  If you find it too hard, Musgrave will put your husband in plaster.”

He went East next morning with the supply train, and Helen was sorry to see him go.  He had done what was needed with quiet efficiency, but she knew he had other patients scattered about a wide district.

Charnock came in for a few minutes now and then during the day, and Musgrave was often about, but Helen was content to be left alone with her husband.  His helplessness moved her; he had been marked by such vigor and energy, and it was strange to see him unable to move.  Yet, while very pitiful, she felt a vague satisfaction because she could help him and he needed her.

When it was getting dark she went to the door and looked out.  The evening was calm and belts of pale-yellow broke the soft gray clouds.  The eastern peaks were touched with an orange glow, but the snow lower down faded through shades of blue and purple into gloom.  To the west, the pines were black and sharp, with white smears on their lower branches, and a thin haze rose from the river.  The coloring of the landscape was harmoniously subdued, but its rugged grandeur of outline caught Helen’s eye, and she stood for a few minutes, looking about with half-awed admiration.

“Do you feel the cold, Stephen?” she asked.

“No,” said Festing.  “Wonderful view, isn’t it?  But what’s it like outside?”

“Very still.  Everything has a soft look; the harsh glitter’s gone and the air has not the sting it had.  Somehow the calm’s majestic.  The pictures one sees of the mountains hardly give a hint; one feels this is the grandest country in the world, but it looks strangely unfinished.”

Festing laughed.  “A few ranches, roads, and cornfields would make a difference?  Well, they follow the Steel in Canada and it’s my job to clear the way.  But the soft look promises warmer weather, and Bob will get ahead if a Chinook wind begins to blow.  I imagine he hasn’t done very much the last few days.”

“You mustn’t bother about what Bob is doing,” Helen said firmly.

“Very well.  Light the lamp and sit where I can see you.  There’s something I want to say.”

Helen did so and waited until Festing resumed:  “To begin with, I’ve been a short-sighted, censorious fool about Bob.  I’m ashamed to remember that I said he was a shiftless wastrel.  The worst is I can’t apologize; it wouldn’t make things better to tell him what I thought.”

“That’s obvious,” said Helen, with a smile.  “Still, in a way perhaps, you were not so very wrong.  Bob was something of a wastrel; his wife has made him a useful man.”

“Another thing I was mistaken about!  I rather despised Sadie.  Now I want to take off my hat when I think of her.  But it’s puzzling.  A girl without polish, taste, or accomplishments marries a man who has them all.  She has no particular talents; nothing, in fact, except some beauty, rude integrity, and native shrewdness.  Yet she, so to speak, works wonders.  Puts Bob on his feet and leads him on, when nobody else could have pulled him out of the mire!”