For a minute I watched in silence. Then, encouraged by the pale radiance which was swallowing the feebler stars and softening the blackness above, I choked down my fears and crept stealthily out of the thicket. Before me the two shadows were still vaguely visible, gliding rapidly toward the southern woods. Like a detective trailing his prey, I stumbled among the weeds and rocks in their wake. But, all the time, I felt that I was pursuing mere wraiths; and, though I walked my swiftest, I found it impossible to gain upon them. They were several hundred yards ahead, and several hundred yards ahead they remained, while I put forth my utmost effort and they appeared to make no effort at all. And at last, to my dismay, they reached the shaggy boundary of the woods; merged with it; and were blotted out.
With what poor patience I could still command, I took the only possible course. While dawn lent gradual color to the skies, I hovered at the forest edge; and in the first dismal twilight I began to inspect the ground, hopeful of discovering some telltale evidence.
But no evidence was to be had. I did indeed find the footprints I was looking for; the trouble was that I found too many footprints. Not two persons but twenty had passed on this path, which I recognized as a trail leading toward Yulada. But all the tracks were new-made, and all equally obscured by the others; and it was impossible to say which were the freshest, or to follow any in particular.
When I returned to the village, not a person was stirring among the cabins; an unearthly stillness brooded over the place, and I could have imagined it to be a town of the dead. Had I not been utterly fatigued by my night in the open, I might have been struck even more strongly by the solitude, and have paused to investigate; as it was, I made straight for my own hut, flung myself down upon my straw couch, and sank into a sleep from which I did not awaken until well past noon.
After a confused and hideous dream, in which I lay chained to a glacier while an arctic wind blew through my garments, I opened my eyes with the impression that the nightmare had been real. A powerful wind was blowing! I could hear it blustering and wailing among the treetops; through my open window it flickered and sallied with a breath that seemed straight from the Pole. Leaping to my feet, I hastily closed the great shutters I had constructed of pine wood; and, at the same time, I caught glimpses of gray skies with a scudding rack of clouds, and of little white flakes driving and reeling down.
In my surprise at this change in the weather, I was struck by premonitions as bleak as the bleak heavens. What of Yasma? How would she behave in the storm?—she who was apparently unprepared for the winter! Though I tried to convince myself that there was no cause for concern, an unreasoning something within me insisted that there was cause indeed. It was not a minute, therefore, before I was slipping on my goatskin coat.
But I might have spared my pains. At this instant there came a tapping from outside, and my heart began to beat fiercely as I shouted, "Come in!"
The log door moved upon its hinges, and a short slim figure slipped inside.
"Yasma!" I cried, surprised and delighted, as I forced the door shut in the face of the blast. But my surprise was swiftly to grow, and my delight to die; at sight of her wild, sad eyes, I started back in wonder and dismay. In part they burned with a mute resignation, and in part with the unutterable pain of one bereaved; yet at the same time her face was brightened with an indefinable exultation, as though beneath that vivid countenance some secret ecstasy glowed and smoldered.