Toto merely blinked in the sunlight and dabbed carelessly at his paw with his red tongue before hopping up to resume his place in Gale’s arms.
Antoinette laughed. “He has already fallen in love with you,” she said in uncertain English.
Gale laid her cheek on the dog’s soft head. She could feel the fast beating of his little heart. She rubbed his ear and he cocked his head in appreciation.
“I like him,” she said.
Antoinette smiled. The stranger looked much better this morning. A little color was coming back to the white cheeks and Toto had already succeeded in rousing a smile. Antoinette brought Gale’s breakfast in to her, after which, while Antoinette was out of the room, Gale got up and dressed herself, glad to know she was physically capable of anything. Toto looked on with silent, doggy admiration. Upon slipping her blouse over her head, Gale’s fingers came in contact with a light golden chain upon which hung a small round locket. She turned it over in her fingers and in the bright morning light could barely make out the word engraved on its surface.
“What is it?” Antoinette had entered unperceived by Gale. Over her shoulder Antoinette looked at the locket. “Ah! Your name—Gale!”
So it was that Antoinette and her brother learned the name of the stranger. Of course they did not know her last name and save for giving them a name for her the discovery did not help much. Evidently the name meant nothing to the girl herself. It stirred absolutely no familiar memories.
Days passed, days spent entirely in the little cabin or with Antoinette in the snow outside. They never went far from the house, so it was not strange that word from the outside world did not reach Antoinette or her brother. They could not know, having no radio, receiving no newspaper or visitors, that the girl in their home was the object of a nationwide search. Gale endeared herself to the two in the cabin and worked readily into the scheme of their everyday life. She shared the daily chores with Antoinette and that girl, on her part, was teaching Gale to speak her own familiar language.
At night was the most difficult time for Gale. During the day she would be busy with Antoinette or playing with Toto. But at night, when she had gone to her room and the others were asleep, she often lay awake thinking, trying to find a thread that would unravel the mystery of her past life. Tonight was one of the nights when she could not sleep.
Silently she got up and put on her coat. She tiptoed to the door and stepped out into the cold, Canadian night. For a while she stood in the moonlight, then slowly she walked to the group of trees off to the right. The scent of pine was in the air and the wind stirred the branches faintly. She breathed deeply of the cool air and felt the blood tingling to her very fingertips. The silence and friendliness of the night stirred a faint memory of another such night. Somewhere, sometime she had stood exactly so, in the quiet darkness of night. But where or when she did not know.