to Lida and him; but Jay never considered taking his wife home.
He engaged two rooms in a hotel on the Lake Shore Drive, upon the jut of land which commands the long, northward sweep of the shore and the reach of the water unbroken, endless to the northern and eastern horizons. They arrived at night and Lida had her first look at the lake after lights were out and the window lifted.
The moon was shining. She could not see its sphere; the moon was overhead and behind the hotel, meridian high in the clear, cold midwinter sky. Stars gleamed before her. There stood the Dipper, half spilled, with its pointers, whatever their position, stubbornly pistoling the steady, still Pole Star. Alderamin was there, Kochab and Cassiopeia's Chair—all Lida's stale northern stars.
The rim of them ran down to the sea—no sea of sandy coral and palm groves. Floes and ice choked the sea; the floe churned and spewed. A wind, an arctic, frigid wind was blowing, displayed in the brightness of the moon as spray flew sparkling from the splash of the churning ice.
"You didn't tell me this was here," whispered Lida, clinging to Jay.
"You knew Chicago was on the lake."
"I didn't know it was on the Polar Sea. I thought ships crossed it."
"They do," said Jay. "A few, all winter; but the big ships are laid up. They can't get out of the lake through the Straits and into Superior for iron ore. Navigation's closed. Navigation's closed," he repeated, not thinking of what he was telling his wife but cast by it into his sensa-
