devotion, and that purpose was to keep her kneeling in that stuffy room with her face to the back of a chair. She fought this feeling, but it gained new impulse, and suddenly she arose and slipped into the hall where she found her coat and cap and skis. She drew breath, when she opened the outer door, as though she had been stifling; and she went out upon the snow in the direction of the lake.
She heard her grandfather's voice shouting after her; but she did not heed it, and he did not pursue her. It was after eight o'clock and very cold, with a constant wind blowing off the ice. The moon would not rise for several hours, but the stars were shining with midwinter splendour through the pure air, and the snow strengthened their light so that Ethel could see near objects well enough; but the Rock lay lost in obscurity. She gazed frequently for the reappearance of the light which she had seen the hour earlier; so clear was the night that, when she reached the shore, she could see the horizon stars down almost to the level of the ice-sheet. She fancied, indeed, that she could make out the bulk of the Rock eclipsing one of these stars as she moved. Certainly there was no light now upon the Rock; and though she remembered that it had appeared and vanished twice before, its absence filled her with dread.
Yet it might only mean that Barney Loutrelle had left the house on the Rock and was coming to St. Florentin and to her, as she had asked him. No; now the light reappeared and glowed steadily.
She had reached the shore, and she slowed her step. The cold wind blowing in her face and the ice stretching before her, the galaxy of the heavens overhead stilled the panic which had seized her when kneeling
