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"Let me help you,
Marie. You look tired."
She placed her hand on Marie's arm and felt her shiver. Marie
stiffened under that kind, calm hand. Alexandra drew back, perplexed
and hurt.
There was about Alexandra something of the impervious calm of the
fatalist, always disconcerting to very young people, who cannot
feel that the heart lives at all unless it is still at the mercy
of storms; unless its strings can scream to the touch of pain.

II

Signa's wedding supper was over. The guests, and the tiresome
little Norwegian preacher who had performed the marriage ceremony,
were saying good-night. Old Ivar was hitching the horses to the
wagon to take the wedding presents and the bride and groom up to
their new home, on Alexandra's north quarter. When Ivar drove up
to the gate, Emil and Marie Shabata began to carry out the presents,
and Alexandra went into her bedroom to bid Signa good-bye and to
give her a few words of good counsel. She was surprised to find
that the bride had changed her slippers for heavy shoes and was
pinning up her skirts.


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