The wind from the cast was driving before it a host of melancholy snow-laden clouds.  Threateningly they swept over white ground and sullen wood, and the earth seemed awaiting another fold of its winding-sheet; cypress, spruce and fir, close side by side and motionless, were passive in their attitude of uncomplaining endurance.  The stumps above the snow were like floating wreckage on a dreary sea.  In all the landscape there was naught that spoke of a spring to come—­of warmth and growth; rather did it seem a shard of some disinherited planet under the eternal rule of deadly cold.

All of her life had Maria known this cold, this snow, the land’s death-like sleep, these austere and frowning woods; now was she coming to view them with fear and hate.  A paradise surely must it be, this country to the south where March is no longer winter and in April the leaves are green!  At midwinter one takes to the road without snowshoes, unclad in furs, beyond sight of the cruel forest.  And the cities ... the pavements ...

Questions framed themselves upon her lips.  She would know if lofty houses and shops stood unbrokenly on both sides of the streets, as she had been told; if the electric cars ran all the year round; if the living was very dear ...  And the answers to her questions would have satisfied but a little of this eager curiosity, would scarcely have disturbed the enchanting vagueness of her illusion.

She was silent, however, dreading to speak any word that might seem like the foreshadowing of a promise.  Though Lorenzo gazed at her long as they walked together across the snow, he was able to guess nothing of what was passing in her heart.

“You will not have me, Maria?  You have no liking for me, or is it, perhaps, that you cannot make up your mind?” As still she gave no reply he clung to this idea, fearing that she might hastily refuse him.

“No need whatever that you should say ‘Yes’ at once.  You have not known me very long ...  But think of what I have said to you.  I will come back, Maria.  It is a long journey and costly, but I will come.  And if only you give thought to it, you will see there is no young fellow here who could give you such a future as I can; because if you marry me we shall live like human beings, and not have to kill ourselves tending cattle and grubbing in the earth in this out-of-the-way comer of the world.”

They returned to the house.  Lorenzo gossiped a little about his journey to the States, where the springtime would have arrived before him, of the plentiful and well-paid work to which his good clothes and prosperous air bore witness.  Then he bade them adieu, and Maria, whose eyes had carefully been avoiding his, seated herself by the window, and watched the night and the snow falling together as she pondered in the deep unrest of her spirit.

CHAPTER XIII

LOVE BEARING CHAINS