Thereafter Angela took over the piscatorial 199 department. It meant going to the river each morning and breaking the newly formed ice over the fish-hole—a task that called forth all her physical energy. At times the fish were scarce and the journeys without result, but they were not entirely wasted. She found that her body glowed with the exercise and her soft arms began to develop muscle.
Each day Jim took the sled and the dogs, and explored the creek in the neighborhood. Farther and farther afield he went, staying away at nights and leaving Angela to the melancholia of her soul. The shack seemed full of a strange presence, a ghostly kind of ego that made itself felt. Then along the valley came the bloodcurdling howl of a wolf, to add to her terror and misery.
The icehole froze up on one bitter night, and all the efforts of Jim could not reach water again. He eventually gave up the task as hopeless.
“Frozen right down to the river bed,” he explained.
The great loneliness took deeper hold of her. The eternal gloom began to affect her mentally. She became the victim of prolonged fits of depression; 200 Jim, tired and heavy-hearted with his arduous wanderings, noticed the change in her. It caused him acute mental agony, and not a little self-reproach. At nights he pondered the problem. Was he subjecting her to unjustifiable misery? Had he a right to do this? He knew he had not, but he was hoping—hoping vainly that she might abandon that spirit of antagonism, manifest in her every movement, and speak and act as one human being to another. He grew sick to realize that her will was no less strong than his own. What was there left to do but take her back and acknowledge defeat?
Defeat! The word aroused all his innate stubbornness. Never had he acknowledged defeat before. He had won through by sticking to the task at hand. Was he to give in now—to let this frozen-hearted woman beat him all round? How Featherstone would purr with pleasure when he knew! How all those high-browed aristocrats would congratulate this ill-treated wife on disposing of her unfortunate husband!
The old grievance still rankled, and his refusal to forget it reacted upon himself. This wilderness of great cold and hardship could not break 201 his endeavor, but a woman was slowly and surely doing so. All his dreams evolved around her—maddening dreams in which he was grasping and missing her....
The climax was to come, and it came in a way that was totally unexpected. It came with such crushing relentless weight that it left him a mere wreck of a man.
For three days Angela had spoken no word. When he arrived back at the shack after the usual vain hunt for gold, she gave him but a quick glance, sufficient enough to convey to her that he had failed for the hundredth time. On the third night, instead of handing him his meal from the stove she sat down and burst into passionate sobs.
Instinctively he put out his hand to clasp her trembling fingers. She pushed it away fiercely and stood up, shaking with emotion.