'But if you don't know how to put them on how can you walk in them?'
'I have seen men walk in them, and there are a great many things we can do when something depends upon it.'
She directed him how to cross and tie the straps; she continued to watch him, increasing anxiety betraying itself in her face.
The snow was so light that even the snow-shoes sank some four or five inches. It was just below the porch that he had tied his straps, and when he first moved forward he trod with one shoe on the top of the other. He had not expected this; he felt that no further progress was within the bounds of possibility. For some half minute he stood, his back to the door, his face turned to the illimitable region of drifts and feathery air, unable to conceive how to go forward and without a thought of turning back. When his pulses were surging and tingling with the discomfort of her gaze, he heard the door shut sharply. Perhaps she thought that he was shamming and was determined not to yield again; perhaps—and this seemed even worse—she had been overcome in the midst of her stern responsibility by the powers of laughter; perhaps, horrid thought, she had gone for Morin to bid him again throw the noose over his treacherous shoulders. The last thought pricked him into motion. By means of his reason he discovered that if he was to make progress at all the rackets must not overlap one another as he trod; his next effort was naturally to walk with his feet so wide apart that the rackets at their broadest could not interfere. The result was that in a few moments he became like a miniature Colossus of Rhodes, fixed again so that he could not move, his feet upon platforms at either side of a harbour of snow.
He heard the door open now again sharply, and he felt certain, yes, certain, that the lasso was on its way through the air; this time he was not going to submit. As men do unthinkingly what they could in no way do by thought, he found himself facing the door, his snow-shoes truly inextricably mixed with one another, but still he had turned round. There was no rope, no Morin; Madge was standing alone upon the outer step of the porch, her face aflame with indignation.
'This is either perfect folly or you have deceived me,' she cried.
'I shall learn how to use them in a minute,' he said humbly. He was conscious as he spoke that his twisted legs made but an unsteady pedestal, that the least push would have sent him headlong into the drift.
'How could you say that you would go?' she asked fiercely.
He looked down at his feet as schoolboys do when chidden, but for another reason. The question as to whether or not he could get his snow-shoes headed again in the right direction weighed like lead upon his heart.
'I thought that I could walk upon these things,' he said, and he added, with such determination as honour flying from shame only knows, 'and I will walk on them and do your errand.'