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 a.s.sumed 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.

"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 creva.s.se; 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 embarra.s.sment, 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, encompa.s.sing 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 r.e.t.a.r.d 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 encompa.s.sed her with the warmth and radiance of a flood of sunshine.

In spite of her protests and appeals, Seagreave would not permit her to help much with the household tasks, but busied himself almost constantly with them, maintaining with a sort of methodical pleasure the inspired order of his cabin. It is possible that he gave to each task a more exhaustive and undeviating attention than even he considered necessary, and this to cover the sense of embarra.s.sment he felt in adapting himself not only to this pervasive, feminine presence, but to the exigencies of an unwonted companionship hedged about with restrictions.

He often felt as if he were entertaining a bird of brilliant tropical plumage in his cabin, as if it had flown thither from glowing southern lands and brought with it sensuous memories of color and fragrance, and wafts of sandalwood.

Sometimes he and Pearl walked about on the barren hillside, constantly washed more bare of snow by the daily rains which had begun to fall, and sometimes he read aloud to her a little, but in spite of Pearl's intelligence she had never cared much for books. She craved no record of another's emotions and struggles and pa.s.sions. No life at second hand for her. She was absorbed in the living.

But if in the day there were many tasks to be done, and Harry could occupy more or less time in the hewing of wood and carrying of water, and all of the practical duties which that phrase may stand for, there were long evenings when he and Pearl sat in the firelight, their speech and their silence alike punctuated by the wail of the mountain wind about the cabin and the singing of the burning logs upon the hearth.

And it was during those evening hours that Seagreave felt most the shyness which her constant presence induced in him. By day he busied himself in securing her comfort, but by night he was tormented by his own chivalrous and fastidious thought of her, by his desire to rea.s.sure her mind, without words, if possible, as to the consequences of their isolation.

But sometimes after he had lighted her candle and she had said good-night, and had entered the little room where she slept, he would either sit beside the glowing embers or else build up afresh the great fire which was never permitted to die out night or day during the winter months, his thoughts full of her, dwelling on her, clinging to the memories of the day.

Jose's personality had been neither ubiquitous nor dominating. Seagreave had noticed him no more about the cabin than he had the little mountain brook which purled its way down the hill; but now his housemate was feminine, and with every pa.s.sing hour he was more conscious of it. At night, after Pearl had gone to bed, he felt her presence as definitely as though she were still there. Some quality of her individuality lingered and haunted the room and haunted his thoughts as the sweet, unfamiliar odor of an exotic blossom permeates the atmosphere and remains, even when the flower is gone.

And as for Pearl, whether she walked on the barren hillsides or dreamed by the fire, or stood at the window watching Harry chop wood or carry water from the rushing mountain brook, her mind held but one thought, her heart but one image--him.

The studious abstraction, the ordered calm which characterized Seagreave's cabin, made fragrant by burning pine logs and fresh with the cold winds from the mountain tops, had altered by imperceptible and subtle gradations until the atmosphere was now strangely electrical, throbbing with vital life, glowing with warmth and color. In outer semblance nothing was changed, no more than was the appearance of the world outside, and yet beneath the surface of the lives in the cabin, as beneath the surface of the earth without, all the mighty forces of Nature were bent to one end.

Without, the spring thaws which were to melt down the mountain of snow in the ravine below were no longer presaged, but at hand. The rain fell for hours each day, but the dull and weeping skies, the heavy air, oppressed Seagreave's spirits and made him now sad and listless, but for the most part curiously restless.

Strive as he would, he could not escape nor ignore it, this atmosphere of the exotic which filled his cabin, the atmosphere of Pearl's beauty and magnetism and of her love for him. He did not recognize it as that.

He only felt it as some strange, disturbing element which, while it troubled his thought, yet claimed it. His growing love for her filled him with a sort of terror. It seemed to him a mounting tide which would sweep him, he knew not whither, and with all the strength of his nature he struggled to hold to the resolution he had made the first day they were alone in the cabin, not to press his love upon her until she had left the shelter of his roof and was back again with her father.

One evening the two sat in the cabin together, as usual, Seagreave on one side of the fire reading--that is, his eyes were upon the book and he seemed apparently absorbed in its contents--but in reality his entire thought was focused upon Pearl, who sat opposite him in a low chair, her hands clasped idly in her lap, and he struggled desperately to maintain his att.i.tude of friendly comradeship when he addressed her.

The leaping of the flames on the hearth made quaint arabesques of shadow on the rough walls and the wind sighed and sobbed in the chimney. Thus they sat for an hour or two in silence and then Seagreave lifted his eyes and stole one of his swift and frequent glances at Pearl. Something he saw riveted his attention and he continued to gaze, forgetful of his book, of his past resolutions, of anything in the world but her.

She was just loosening the cord which bound the throat of a small black leather bag, and while he watched her she poured its contents into her lap and sat bending over a handful of loose and sparkling jewels. She was not aware of his scrutiny, but sat in complete absorption, her dark, shining head bent over them, lifting them, turning them this way and that to catch the firelight, letting them trickle through her long, brown fingers.

There, sparkling in the fire-glow, was the desire of the world, the white, streaming flame of diamonds, the heart's blood of rubies, and sapphires--the blue of the sea and the sky--all their life and radiance imprisoned in a dew-drop.

"How beautiful they are!" he cried involuntarily, but what he really meant was, "How beautiful you are!"

She started and looked up at him in surprise. "Yes, they are," she said.

"I have been gathering them for a long time. There are only a few, but every one is flawless."

"I never considered jewels before." He bent forward the better to see them. "I have often seen women wear them, but I just regarded them as a part of their decoration. Yet I can understand now why you love them.

They are very beautiful, unset that way." He looked at her deeply. "But I believe it is for some reason deeper than that that they have a fascination for you. You are like them."

She let them fall like drops of rainbow water through her fingers; then she lifted her lashes. "Am I hard and cold like them?" She sent darting and dazzling full in his eyes her baffling, heart-shivering smile.

He did not answer at once, and she, still gazing at him, saw that he paled visibly, every tinge of color receding from his face; his eyes, deep and dark, held hers, as if reading her soul and demanding that she reveal the strange secrets of her nature.

The forces of life ready to burst through the harsh crust of the earth without and express themselves in the innocent glory of flower and gra.s.s and tender, green leaves, and the sound of birds, were now seeking expression through denser and more complex human avenues. All the love, all the longing which Seagreave had so sternly suppressed during these days he and Pearl had spent together, rose in his heart and threatened to sweep away in a mighty tide of elemental impulses all of those resolutions of restraint to which he had clung so hardly.

He arose and leaned his arm on the mantel-piece, still gazing at her as if he could never withdraw his eyes. "You are so--so beautiful," he stammered, scarcely knowing what he said. "The world will claim you. You have so much to give it and all your nature, all your heart turns to it.

You will soon forget this hut in the mountains, and--and all that it has meant." He buried his head in his arms.

She, too, rose and laid the handful of her jewels on the table without another glance at them. "These mountains!" She threw wide her arms and drew a long, ecstatic breath. She came near to him and touched his arm.

"I hated them once, I love them now." She smiled up at him, her darkly slumbrous, scarlet-lipped smile.

He leaned toward her as if to clasp her close, but the vows he had sworn to himself a thousand times since she had been in his cabin alone with him still held him. Slowly he drew back and with all the strength of his nature fought for self-control. He called upon every force of his will, and in that supreme moment his face hardened to the appearance of a sculptured mask; all of its finely-drawn outlines seemed set in stone.

She turned angry shoulders to him and stirred the stones on the table with impatient fingers until they rolled about, flashing darts of light.

Symbols of power, of material and deadening splendor; eternal accompaniments of imperial magnificence! The sapphires sang triumph, the diamonds conquest, the rubies pa.s.sionate and fulfilled love.

"They are what you really care for." He spoke huskily; his voice sounded thick and uncertain in his ears. "That and--and your wonderful dancing, and applause--and success and money. It's natural that you should--but it all makes me realize--clearly, that I can't even try to force myself into your life. There's no place for me. Even--even if you were kind--you sometimes seem to--to--to suggest that you would be--I'd be just a useless cog, soon to be dropped. It's all complete without me.

But, for G.o.d's sake, I'm begging you, I'm begging you, Pearl, not to be kind to me for the rest of the time that we're here together."

"And what about me?" she flashed. "You've thought everything out from your own side, and you've just been telling it. Don't you think I've got a side, too? I guess so."

He looked at her in surprise, the emotion that had changed and broken his expression fading into wonderment and puzzle.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Kiss me, and I'll show you," she said audaciously. All the allurement, the softness and sweetness of the south was in her mouth and eyes.