him. He thought of the intoxicating delight of ski-ing in the
moonlight....

Thus, somehow, in vivid flashing vision, he thought of it while he stood
there smoking with the other men and talking all the "shop" of ski-ing.

And, ever mysteriously blended with this power of the snow, poured also
through his inner being the power of the girl. He could not disabuse his
mind of the insinuating presence of the two together. He remembered that
queer skating-impulse of ten days ago, the impulse that had let her in.
That any mind, even an imaginative one, could pass beneath the sway of
such a fancy was strange enough; and Hibbert, while fully aware of the
disorder, yet found a curious joy in yielding to it. This insubordinate
centre that drew him towards old pagan beliefs had assumed command. With
a kind of sensuous pleasure he let himself be conquered.

And snow that night seemed in everybody's thoughts. The dancing couples
talked of it; the hotel proprietors congratulated one another; it meant
good sport and satisfied their guests; every one was planning trips and
expeditions, talking of slopes and telemarks, of flying speed and
distance, of drifts and crust and frost. Vitality and enthusiasm pulsed
in the very air; all were alert and active, positive, radiating currents
of creative life even into the stuffy atmosphere of that crowded
ball-room. And the snow had caused it, the snow had brought it; all this
discharge of eager sparkling energy was due primarily to the--Snow.

But in the mind of Hibbert, by some swift alchemy of his pagan
yearnings, this energy became transmuted. It rarefied itself, gleaming
in white and crystal currents of passionate anticipation, which he
transferred, as by a species of electrical imagination, into the