"Paul!"
I must have been half asleep, for I came back to myself with a start and sprang to my feet. Jacqueline had risen upon her knees; she flung her arms out wildly, and suddenly she caught her breath and screamed, and stood up, and ran uncertainly toward me, with hands that groped for me.
She found me; I caught her, and she pushed me from her and shuddered and stared at me in that uncertain doubt that follows dreams.
"I am here, Jacqueline," I said. "With you—always, till you send me away. Remember that even in dreams, Jacqueline."
She knew me now, and she was recoiling from me, out through the hut door, into the blinding snow. I sprang after her.
"Jacqueline! It is I—Paul! It is Paul! Jacqueline!"
She was running from me and screaming in the snow. I heard her moccasins breaking through the thin ice crust. And, mad with terror, I rushed after her.
"Jacqueline! It is Paul!" I cried.
And as I emerged from the hut's shelter a red-hot glare from the east seemed to sear and kill my vision. It was the rising sun. I had thought it night, and it was already day. And I could see nothing through my swollen eyelids except the white light of the shining snow. The wind howled round me, and though the sun shone, the snowflakes stung my face like hail.
I did not know under the influence of what dread dream she was. But I ran wildly to and fro, calling her, and now and again I heard the sound of her little moccasins as she plunged through the knee-high snow.