She was up betimes the next day, anxious to see whether more snow had fallen during the night; but none had. To her joy, it was one of those brilliant mornings when the sky seems a dome of sapphire sparkles, and the crust of the snow with the sun on it is like white star-dust overlaid with gold. The radiance would have been unbearable had not the bare, black trees veiled the sky with their network of branches and twigs and the pines softened the snow with their shadows.
Pearl had rapidly acquired proficiency in her new accomplishment, and she and Seagreave had covered several miles when, on their return, they paused to rest a bit in the little bower of stunted pines. Here Seagreave cut some branches from the trees for them to sit on and, gathering some dry, fallen boughs and cones, built a fire.
They enjoyed this a few moments in silence and then Pearl spoke. "Why," she asked with her usual directness, "why did you get up and walk up and down the room last night when Hughie was playing? What was it in his music that made you forget all of us and even, as you said, forget that you were not in your own cabin?"
"That was stupid of me and rude, too," he said compunctiously. "Something that he was playing called up so vivid a memory that I forgot everything."
There was a quick gleam in her eyes; she was resentful of memories that could make him forget her very presence, hers. "What was it you were thinking of?" she asked. Her voice was low.
He looked out over the snow before he answered. "A girl," he said, and cast another handful of pine cones upon the fire.
She did not speak nor move, and yet her whole being was instinct with a sudden tense attention. "Yes, a girl," she said insistently. "What was she like?" the words leaped from her, voicing themselves almost without her volition.
He sighed and appeared to speak with some effort. "It was long ago," he said. "She was like violets or white English roses."
"And did you love her?" she asked, that soft tenseness still in her voice, "and did she love you?"
"I suppose every man has his ideal of woman, perhaps unconsciously to himself, and she was mine."