He could neither believe what he had seen nor deny the
evidence of his vision. He kept watch, with the glasses ready to fix
upon the woman if she emerged again. But she did not reappear. The
cold began to chill his body, to stiffen his limbs. He rose at last
and made his way along the cliff, keeping always a close watch on the
house below until he came abreast of his own quarters and turned
reluctantly into the hollow where the cedars masked the log cabin.
He cooked a meal and ate his food in a mechanical sort of abstraction,
troubled beyond measure, rousing himself out of periods of
concentration in which there seemed, curiously, to be two of him
present,--one questioning and wondering, the other putting forward
critical and sneering answers, pointing out the folly of his wonder.
In the end he began to entertain a real doubt not only of the
correctness of his sight, but also of his sanity. For it was clearly
impossible, his reason insisted, that Myra would be pioneering in
those snowy solitudes, that she should live in a rude shack among
stumps on the fringe of a wilderness.
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