“I know you—I know you,” she said aloud. “You’ve got to take your toll. And when you’re lying asleep like that, or pretending to, you reach up-and kill. And yet you can be kind-ah, but you can be kind and beautiful! But you must have your toll one way or t’other.” She sighed and paused; then, after a moment, looking along the trail—“I don’t expect they’ll come to-night, and mebbe not to-morrow, if—if they stay for THAT.”
Her eyes closed, she shivered a little. Her lips drew tight, and her face seemed suddenly to get thinner. “But dad wouldn’t—no, he couldn’t, not considerin’—” Again she shut her eyes in pain.
Her face was now turned from the western road by which she had expected her travellers, and towards the east, where already the snow was taking on a faint bluish tint, a reflection of the sky deepening nightwards in that half-circle of the horizon. Distant and a little bleak and cheerless the half-circle was looking now.
“No one—not for two weeks,” she said, in comment on the eastern trail, which was so little frequented in winter, and this year had been less travelled than ever. “It would be nice to have a neighbour,” she added, as she faced the west and the sinking sun again. “I get so lonely—just minutes I get lonely. But it’s them minutes that seem to count more than all the rest when they come. I expect that’s it—we don’t live in months and years, but just in minutes. It doesn’t take long for an earthquake to do its work—it’s seconds then.... P’r’aps dad won’t even come to-morrow,” she added, as she laid her hand on the latch. “It never seemed so long before, not even when he’s been away a week.” She laughed bitterly. “Even bad company’s better than no company at all. Sure. And Mickey has been here always when dad’s been away past times. Mickey was a fool, but he was company; and mebbe he’d have been better company if he’d been more of a scamp and less a fool. I dunno, but I really think he would. Bad company doesn’t put you off so.”
There was a scratching at the inside of the door. “My, if I didn’t forget Shako,” she said, “and he dying for a run!”
She opened the door quickly, and out jumped a Russian dog of almost full breed, with big, soft eyes like those of his mistress, and with the air of the north in every motion—like his mistress also.
“Come, Shako, a run—a run!”
An instant after she was flying off on a path towards the woods, her short skirts flying and showing limbs as graceful and shapely as those of any woman of that world of social grace which she had never seen; for she was a prairie girl through and through, born on the plains and fed on its scanty fare—scanty as to variety, at least. Backwards and forwards they ran, the girl shouting like a child of ten,—she was twenty-three, her eyes flashing, her fine white teeth showing, her hands thrown up in sheer excess of animal life, her hair blowing about her face-brown, strong hair, wavy and plentiful.
Fine creature as she was, her finest features were her eyes and her hands. The eyes might have been found in the most savage places; the hands, however, only could have come through breeding. She had got them honestly; for her mother was descended from an old family of the French province. That was why she had the name of Loisette—and had a touch of distinction. It was the strain of the patrician in the full blood of the peasant; but it gave her something which made her what she was—what she had been since a child, noticeable and besought, sometimes beloved. It was too strong a nature to compel love often, but it never failed to compel admiration. Not greatly a creature of words, she had become moody of late; and even now, alive with light and feeling and animal life, she suddenly stopped her romp and run, and called the dog to her.
“Heel, Shako!” she said, and made for the door of the little house, which looked so snug and home-like. She paused before she came to the door, to watch the smoke curling up from the chimney straight as a column, for there was not a breath of air stirring. The sun was almost gone and the strong bluish light was settling on everything, giving even the green spruce trees a curious burnished tone.