XVII


David slept peacefully that night, like a man who has reached the
end of long suspense. When he threw his shutters open late, he
found that the storm had finished its work and gone and that the
weather had settled stinging cold. The heavens were hyacinth, the
ground white with snow; and the sun, day-lamp of that vast ceiling
of blue, made the earth radiant as for the bridal morn of Winter.
So HIS thoughts ran.

"Gabriella! Gabriella!" he cried, as he beheld the beauty, the
purity, the breadth, the clearness. "It is you--except the
coldness, the cruelty."

All day then those three: the hyacinthine sky, the flashing lamp,
the white earth, with not one crystal thawing.

It being Saturday, there was double work for him. He knocked up the
wood for that day and for Sunday also, packed and stored it; cut
double the quantity of oats; threw over twice the usual amount of
fodder. The shocks were buried. He had hard kicking to do before he
reached the rich brown fragrant stalks. Afterwards he made paths
through the snow about the house for his mother; to the dairy, to
the hen-house. In the wooden monotony of her life an interruption
in these customary visits would have been to her a great loss. The
snow being over the cook's shoe-tops, he took a basket and dug the