the keenest emotion attached to the first meeting of their eyes.

Paul was unnerved by his sudden recall from death to life. Its contrasts
were overwhelming to his starved senses: from the dirt and dearth and
grimy despair of his burial hutch in the snow to this softly lighted,
close-curtained room, warm and sweet with flowers; from the gaunt,
unshaven spectre of the packer and his ghostly revelations, to Moya,
meekly beautiful, her bright eyes lowered as she trailed her soft skirts
across the carpet; Moya seated opposite, silent, conscious of him in every
look and movement. Her lovely hands lay in her lap, and the thought of
holding them in his made him tremble; and when he recalled the last time
he had kissed her he grew faint. He longed to throw off this exhausting
self-restraint, but feared to betray his helpless passion which he deemed
an insult to his soul's worship of her.

And she was thinking: "Is this all it is going to mean--his coming
home--our being together? And I was almost his wife!"

"So it was my mother you were talking to in the study? I thought I heard a
man's voice."

"It was the doctor. Your mother was not quite herself this evening. He
came in to see her, but he does not think she is ill. 'Rest and change,'
he says she needs."

Paul gave the words a certain depth of consideration. "Are you as well as
usual, Moya?"

"Oh, I am always well," she answered cheerlessly. "I seem to thrive on
anything--everything," she corrected herself, and blushed.