THE white giant, sun-stricken, drooping languidly, crumbled and dissolved before their eyes. The air softened. The streams rushed full, the southern hillsides showed bare and gaunt.

In the lake cabin they felt aged by their imprisonment. It had been so long, so remote from the world rush. Like prisoners long confined, they were loath to leave a dungeon where life had been well ordered if not exhilarating. Benumbed in the first days of the change, they returned indoors to the soothing evenness of their six months' hibernation. They found those first changes unbelievable. Winter would surely go on forever; too mighty a jailer it was to be vanquished by a mere breath of honey and flowers. They stayed in to warn one another against false appearances.

But there came a day when, in the blaze of noontime, Ben Crider moved his chair out by the door and sang softly to the strains of his guitar. His eyes blinked in the sunlight as he sang, yet they did not fail to detect the signs of spring so plentiful about the clearing in bud and leaf and tiny grass shoot, even though patches of snow still lay in the shaded spots.

The woman who cooked came also to the door as Ben sang. He had spoken of her the winter through as "the woman," dimly perceiving her as a spirit that mumbled endless complainings as she toiled, for she was one who had been disillusioned by much cooking. She cooked acceptably, and Ben had burgeoned in the uncanny luxury of food prepared by another hand than his own, but he had given her little attention beyond discovering her opinion that cooking was a barren performance, since people perversely ate and thereby destroyed, and the thing must be done again endlessly. He had vaguely observed that this woman was not beautiful, and now, as she faced him with a sudden joviality in the spring sunshine, he saw that she could never have been beautiful. She beamed amicably on the balladist, and he, turning casual eyes on her, was stricken to dismayed silence; the tuneful praise of young love fainted on his lips as he stared, aghast, and his startled hand hushed the vibrant strings. A moment he looked, recovering from the shock. Then, in swift recoil, he grasped his chair and went resolutely out under the big hemlock, there to resume his song and his absent contemplation of Nature's awakening—his back to the cabin door. In this sensitive mood he wished not to incur again a vision that blighted song.

It was no longer disputable that spring was real; no baseless tradition, but an unfolding reality. Ben had divined it, and the other prisoners were not long in proving it.

One of them surveyed it in panic wonder, turning in upon herself to face the ordeal of enforced living. They wandered in the open, three of them, now, finding it good to feel the bare, elastic earth under their feet again, and prove the noiseless but sensational life of growing things all about them. They plucked buds to see their secret hearts, and exposed the roots of peeping herbs that had begun their strivings before the snow went.

When the sunny places had been dried and warmed, and were pulsing in their myriad hidden hearts, so that winter began to fade in their minds as some dream of night, they would penetrate the sunless depths of a narrow caÑon where the snow yet lay deep and the stream was a mere choking of ice in a gorge.

It was in the flush of this exultation over winter's downfall that they planned camp life in a vale at the edge of the lake, where the spruces thinned to leave wide-vaulted arches, and spread the floor with yielding brown rugs of the pine needle. They began it as a play, and finished with a permanent camp into which they moved from the cabin. There were tents and beds, a table, a sheet-iron stove, chests for their stores, and hammocks in which to be fanned by the south wind.

Bartell promised his sister vast benefits from this life.

"This will put the finishing touches to you, Sis. A month here and you'll be loping over the range, high, wide, and handsome. It'll take an elk-high fence to hold you after you've slept awhile out here."

She felt the truth of what he said, and was appalled by it. Almost daily she dismayed herself by recalling some unpremeditated feat of strength or endurance. Life had crept back to her like a whipped dog, and bitterly she felt the sting of its satire. She was loath to leave the cabin in which she had so long nursed death. She had impregnated the very walls with an atmosphere of dissolution. But she understood now that that prison house could no longer suffice her. Stubborn life had prevailed over all its powers of suggestion. There she had clung stubbornly to the old solution, cherishing a hope of some sudden relapse, despite the new life that taunted her with its animal buoyance. But once in the open, her brain was washed of that. Her mind was as clear as the fathomless blue above them at noon; and the stars at night were not more coldly luminous than the reasoning she bent upon herself, nor sharper than a certain deduction she made.

Ewing brought his drawing to the camp and spent the mornings in work. He had finished his series for the Knickerbocker during the winter, and these drawings, with the illustrations for the story previously made, had brought him enough to discharge the Teevan debt. He had reported this transaction significantly to Mrs. Laithe, and was now busy on pictures for another story for the Knickerbocker.

"Only a little longer," he said, with a meaning she could not fathom, and he returned to his work with a singular absorption. Not even Ben could distract him when he sauntered up for his daily criticism. Ben was respectful to the drawings after he saw the checks they brought, but his summing up of the purchaser's acumen never varied.

"Well, well—fools and their money! The idee of payin' out cash for a thing that looks as much like Red Phinney as that there does!"

When work was done for the day Ewing would turn to Mrs. Laithe with a smile of release, and they would stray along some dim trail or off into pathless, shaded silences of the wood, lingering in grassy mountain meadows, or skirting the base of bleak crags where streaks of snow in shadow still clung to the gray walls. She was conscious then of a tumult throbbing wonderfully beneath the surface of their companionship—a tumult of life aching for release. In little chance moments of silence this rumbled ominously, leaving her fearful, but curiously resigned, moved to blind flight, yet chained and submissive as were the hills themselves.

One afternoon they sought their caÑon of delayed winter after many days' neglect of it. They wondered if spring might not have reached even that secret recess at last. They left the trail that skirted the edge and descended a rocky way that Ewing found, emerging at last through a fringe of the stunted cedars into the gloom of the depths.

At first glance this last stronghold of winter seemed to have remained impregnable. Snow lay deep along the bottom, enormous stalactites of ice depended from overhanging ledges, and the stream itself appeared to be still only a riven glacier. But, listening intently, they heard a steady liquid murmur, the very music of spring come at last to sing the gorge awake. As they stood, listening, there was a shivering crash; one of the huge icicles had dropped, shattering on a lower ledge and raining its fragments into the soft snowbed below.

"It's the very last of winter," said Ewing mournfully. "That snow is eaten through and through. See how those bits of ice drove into it. And hear that running water. It will be off with a rush now. It's the very last of it—all I shall have to look back to—that winter of ours together." His tone was full of a meaning she dared not question. They climbed in silence to the summer above and traversed, still silently, the stretch of green woods that grew beyond the caÑon wall. Only at the first mountain meadow, a dazzle of emerald under the slanting sun, did they halt to gaze at each other. His eyes were wonderfully alight with sadness and rejoicing as she faced him, radiant in a moment of forgetfulness, flagrant in her beauty's renewal.

"You're wonderful again," he said, almost whisperingly, "you're all in flower now!" She quickened under his look, feeling the glow on her cheeks. But that faded at his next words.

"I finished the last of those drawings to-day. Now I must go."

"Ah—go?" It was a little cry, half of question, half of understanding.

"Yes—I can go now. I couldn't go before, but I have the money now."

She sickened as they walked on in silence, fearing to question him, and when they reached the camp she ran to throw herself on the bed in her tent, covering her eyes with her hands, pressing the lids down, but making no sound.

As they sat about their camp fire that evening Ewing was struck by a certain view he caught of her. She sat in shadow on a stool at the foot of a towering hemlock, and once when he rose to stir the waning fire a flame shot up from a half-burned log, with a volley of sparks that fell back in a golden rain. He glanced over to be sure that she escaped these, and saw her sharply revealed in the sudden light, unconscious of it, unaroused by the crackling explosion. She was staring fixedly into the darkness, her body relaxed, her hands half clasped, her head, the profile toward him, leaning wearily against the tree. Before this background she seemed frail again, her face pallid under the dark of her hair and against the rough, ruddy brown of the tree bole, her whole body contrasting in its fragile lines with the tree's strength—human weakness showing starkly against the vigor of the woods.

To dull the sudden wanting of his heart for her he walked off alone over the path that bordered the lake, to reduce the amazing actuality of things, if he could, to proportions seemly with normal life. But the lake was a mirror of enchantment, the booming of an owl was a magic portent, the shadowed wall of granite was a turreted castle of mysteries, vague in the starlight, and the very stars themselves huddled down on him excitingly. He was in a world of the unreal, and must do an unreal thing. He stumbled blindly back to camp. He was surprised to find Mrs. Laithe as he had left her, still drooping against the rough-barked tree, weak, submissive, overborne. He touched her arm gently to recall her from some troubled distance. She looked at him with eyes unseeing at first.

"Isn't it bedtime?" he suggested.

She smiled and stood up to shrug away the spell of her dreaming. She spoke with such clear strength of tone that he was at once reassured of her vigor.

"Yes, it's sleeping time—in a moment. I haven't said much to you, but there's really little to say. You feel that you must go?"

"How could I stay here—after that?"

She repressed a sudden spasm of wild, weeping laughter that threatened to overcome her.

"And you'll not come back?" She waited breathless.

"There isn't much chance of it."

"You dear, dear fool!" was on her lips, but she held back the words and said very quietly:"Go out, then, and live as you must. Only don't let life cow you. Don't ever fear that living is intricate or hard or tragic—a thing to be gone about warily. The wary people make the same mistakes as the careless ones, and feel them ten times more. Don't be afraid to dream—afraid to believe. I'm glad I've dreamed every dream of mine—false or true. Never be afraid to want." She turned half away as if to go, but halted, and he thought she had grown suddenly weak.

"You're going——"

"To-morrow, I'd thought—the sooner the better."

"Ah, but that's so soon. Can't we have one more day here? One more day to think of it?"

"I've thought of it all winter, days and nights as well; but I'd like another day—" He watched her longingly as she went beyond the firelight.

"Not a day to think about it," he called softly—"a day to forget."

They made it a day of forgetting, as he had said. In the morning they planned to ride, and their spirits were such as they rode off that Ben was moved to regard them knowingly, as one who had taken a fling at life in his time.

The day long they rode or rambled, talking of all but obvious things—making it, indeed, a day of forgetting and a day to remember. Deep in the woman's heart stirred an instinct of primal coquetry, an impulse to wield her charm upon him, to make the woman prevail over the man, beating all reason down, blindly, madly. And she yielded to this, watching its effect on him, divining the power of her freshened beauty each time she compelled his eyes. Instinctively she would have had him say, "I give up. I can't go. Let me stay—stay by you!" The natural woman in her fought for that. But reason reigned above the conflict. She knew he would not surrender and knew she would not have him surrender. Still she could not resist that impulse to enchain him, and exulted each time she made him tremble at their nearness.

Not until night had come did the imminence of his going seem to lie upon them. But then it lay with a weight. Together they left the camp and felt a way over the darkened trail to the cabin. Ewing had spoken of packing he must do, of matters in which she might help him.

But when they were in the studio, and he had started a great blaze in the fireplace he sat before it with her, silent. She spoke at length of the packing.

"There's none to do," he answered. "I'm taking scarcely anything—only what I can carry back of the saddle."

Her blood leaped with a quick hope.

"Then you're not going for long—you will come back—" But he only shook his head.

"I can't expect to come back." He looked at her with a sudden lighting of his eyes. "Come near to me this once." He moved a stool in front of him. "Sit here, this once."

She sat on the low stool at his feet and felt herself drawn slowly forward until her arms rested on his knees. She laid her head on them, shaken to the heart. Then she felt him bending over her, hovering, sheltering her, and at last, with a long sigh, come to rest, his face buried in her hair. They remained so, immovable, without further speech.

The absurdity of the thing between them had never seemed so egregious to her. The words rang in her mind, burning behind her closed eyes—"It's all a mistake, that. How could you believe it, even you, unused to the world though you are?" But she knew the questions this would bring from him, the doubt that would stay with him; knew she could never satisfy him with less than the truth. For a moment she heard herself telling him this truth, gently, delicately, tenderly. But he spoke, even while she was thinking this.

"I wanted to be here to-night with you, and with her." He raised his head at last, to look at the portrait of his mother. "She understands, I'm sure. And she would have me go—she would have me do as I am doing."

She knew finally, then, that she could never tell him. She ceased all vain considering of that. He was going away from her because of the lie he believed. The truth might come to him some day, but it must never come from her. The certainty brought her a kind of rest. She could fall back on laughter and tears for the thing.

A long time they sat there, speaking little, her head still cradled on his knees. But when the fire died they knew it must be late and rose to go. Ewing looked long at the portrait, then turned to her.

"I'm doing what I would do for her," he said, "and I'm glad I had you both with me this last time. You'll always keep that for me, won't you?" He raised a hand toward the portrait.

"If you wish it," she said.

When they came in sight of the camp fire they stopped and turned to each other. He caught her by the shoulders."Good night and good-by!" he whispered.

She tried to speak, but could not for the trembling of her lips. She turned to go, and took a few faltering steps, then flew back, and with a wild gesture, drew him down and pressed his head against her heart.

Ben came sleepily from the cabin next morning as Ewing was about to mount his horse. He had felt at ease about this journey, because of the slender equipment with which Ewing was setting out. An early return was to be inferred.

Ewing held out his hand, and Ben, observing that it was scarce daylight, and that the act could in no way be considered a public scandal, grasped it cordially.

"So long, Kid—and good luck, whatever you're goin' to do!"

"There's a man down in New York needs killing, Ben."

"Now, look a here, Kid, you better look out"—but the practical aspects of the affair at once seized his mind, and he broke off with, "Got your gun?"

"No—a gun's too good for him."

Ben considered this, and became again solicitous.

"Well, look a here, now, you be darned careful. If it's needed, why, do it. But you jest want to remember that New York ain't Hinsdale County. You want to be mighty careful you don't git into some trouble over it."