Now he lighted another cigar and stood up
close to one of the windows.
Faintly he caught the sound of a step on the board walk outside. It was
a light, quick step, and for an instant it hesitated, just out of his
vision. Then it approached, and suddenly the figure of a woman stopped
in front of the window. How she was dressed Howland could not have told
a moment later. All that he saw was the face, white in the white
night--a face on which the shimmering starlight fell as it was lifted to
his gaze, beautiful, as clear-cut as a cameo, with eyes that looked up
at him half-pleadingly, half-luringly, and lips parted, as if about to
speak to him. He stared, moveless in his astonishment, and in another
breath the face was gone.
With a hurried exclamation he ran across the empty room to the door and
looked down the starlit street. To go from the window to the door took
him but a few seconds, yet he found the street deserted--deserted except
for a solitary figure three blocks away and a dog that growled at him
as he thrust out his head and shoulders. He heard no sound of footsteps,
no opening or closing of a door. Only there came to him that faint,
hissing music of the northern skies, and once more, from the black
forest beyond the Saskatchewan, the infinite sadness of the wolf-howl.
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