"But if I wouldn't last ten minutes, as you so elegantly put it?"
"Not as you are; not as the snow is. But I'm hoping that before it's too late we'll get clear weather, a sun, a thaw, and freezing nights. Then we could tackle it on the crust. And your job now is to get yourself ready for that one chance."
Her anger at the indignity already done her whipped out the sarcasm:
"By getting ready, I suppose you mean for me to pack my trunk and order the expressman at the door?"
He looked at her with a long, impersonal stare which bewildered her; she was at utter loss to read its meaning until he spoke:
"You are to pack what endurance you've got into your muscles. You are to make up your mind to call up all of the grit that's in you. You'll need both. And you are to quit lying around and getting weaker every day; you've got little enough time to harden yourself, so you are going to take on the job right now."
She gasped, incredulous. He nodded sternly.
"Gloria," he said tersely, "I am going to do all that I can for both of us. You are going to do all that you can. That is final."
She bit her lips and gave him her scornful silence. The blood was red and hot in her cheeks.
She ignored him when he called crisply that breakfast was ready. There were limits to her obedience, she thought rebelliously. To be told do this, do that, to arise when this man's body was rested, to eat when his stomach was empty, was intolerable. King looked at her and had the understanding to grasp something of her thought. So he explained: