Every branch stood
motionless beneath its burden of snow. The air was thin, exhilarating,
brilliant--like dry champagne. It seemed to send the blood coursing
through the veins with a very joy of life.
Catrina noted all these things while cleverly handling her ponies. They
spoke to her with a thousand voices. She had roamed in these same
forests with Paul, who loved them and understood them as she did.
Maggie, in the midst as it were of a revelation, leaned back and
wondered at it all. She, too, was thinking of Paul, the owner of these
boundless forests. She understood him better now. This drive had
revealed to her a part of his nature which had rather puzzled her--a
large, simple, quiet strength which had developed and grown to maturity
beneath these trees. We are all part of what we have seen. We all carry
with us through life somewhat of the scenes through which we passed in
childhood.
Maggie knew now where Paul had learnt the quiet concentration of mind,
the absorption in his own affairs, the complete lack of interest in the
business of his neighbor which made him different from other men. He had
learnt these things at first hand from God's creatures. These
forest-dwellers of fur and feather went about their affairs in the same
absorbed way, with the same complete faith, the same desire to leave and
be left alone.
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