high up against the village darkness. The voices died away. Doors
slammed. Hibbert found himself alone on the deserted rink.

And it was then, quite suddenly, the impulse came to--stay and skate
alone. The thought of the stuffy hotel room, and of those noisy people
with their obvious jokes and laughter, oppressed him. He felt a longing
to be alone with the night; to taste her wonder all by himself there
beneath the stars, gliding over the ice. It was not yet midnight, and he
could skate for half an hour. That supper party, if they noticed his
absence at all, would merely think he had changed his mind and gone to
bed.

It was an impulse, yes, and not an unnatural one; yet even at the time
it struck him that something more than impulse lay concealed behind it.
More than invitation, yet certainly less than command, there was a vague
queer feeling that he stayed because he had to, almost as though there
was something he had forgotten, overlooked, left undone. Imaginative
temperaments are often thus; and impulse is ever weakness. For with such
ill-considered opening of the doors to hasty action may come an invasion
of other forces at the same time--forces merely waiting their
opportunity perhaps!

He caught the fugitive warning even while he dismissed it as absurd, and
the next minute he was whirling over the smooth ice in delightful curves
and loops beneath the moon. There was no fear of collision. He could
take his own speed and space as he willed. The shadows of the towering
mountains fell across the rink, and a wind of ice came from the forests,
where the snow lay ten feet deep. The hotel lights winked and went out.
The village slept. The high wire netting could not keep out the wonder
of the winter night that grew about him like a presence. He skated on