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admitting his passion because it might interfere with his work. Interfere! Christabel laughed with tender mockery. It would release the floods of artistic creation in him as well as in her. We will be together on the mountain tops, my dearest. You and I together, and the world forgotten. We will know the deepest and the highest, we will know heart-piercing reality.

No use in hesitating, now that she had decided. "Oh, at last!" she whispered to herself as she stepped out of her clothes and inte her best chemise. Her hands were snow against her flaming cheeks. She went over to her desk and read the last words she had written. "She was a flame wrapped in snow."

How her heart was pounding! She patted Lilas blanc behind her ears and got out fresh gloves. The slushy snow made galoshes necessary. That was annoying.

At the door she paused and covered her face with her hands. "Oh, my dear, be very gentle to me," she whispered.