She was seldom lonely. She marveled at that. It was unique in her
experience. All her old dread of the profound silence, the pathless
forests which infolded like a prison wall, distances which seemed
impossible of span, had vanished. In its place had fallen over her an
abiding sense of peace, of security. The lusty storm winds whistling
about the cabin sang a restful lullaby. When the wolves lifted their
weird, melancholy plaint to the cold, star-jeweled skies, she listened
without the old shudder. These things, which were wont to oppress her,
to send her imagination reeling along morbid ways, seemed but a natural
aspect of life, of which she herself was a part.
Often, sitting before her glowing fireplace, watching a flame kindled
with her own hands with wood she herself had carried from the pile
outside, she pondered this. It defied her powers of self-analysis.
She could only accept it as a fact, and be glad. Granville and all
that Granville stood for had withdrawn to a more or less remote
background. She could look out over the frost-spangled forests and
feel that she lacked nothing--nothing save her mate. There was no
impression of transient abiding; no chafing to be elsewhere, to do
otherwise.
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