The Stirlings are grateful for the weather because it means that there is less chance of meeting the shameless pair in town. The only one concerned is Cousin Georgiana, who worries anxiously that Valancy, who was always prone to winter colds, may not be warm enough at night in the old cabin on the island. Valancy meanwhile has not had a cold all winter and is snug as a bug at nights in the bed she shares with Barney, from which she can look out a window at the frozen Mistawis, glowing in the moonlight.
Late in March, most of the snow has melted away and Barney sets out alone one afternoon to go for a hike deep into the woods. While he's gone a late winter storm blows in, one of the worst of the winter. Night falls and Valancy spends in huddled before the fire, imagining the worst. It is noon the next day when Barney appears out of the trees on the mainland and makes his way across the snow covered ice to the cabin. Valancy's knees give way beneath her and Barney finds her sitting with her face in her hands. She tells him that she thought he was dead and he laughs, pointing out that he survived two years in the Klondike. He tells her that he made his way to an old logging shack and spent the night there, obviously getting more sleep than she had. Valancy tells him that when she saw him emerge from the woods, she felt like she had died and then suddenly been reborn.
One day, Valancy is out in the woods gathering mayflowers when she comes upon an elderly man whom she realises must be Allan Tierney, a celebrated American painter who she's heard keeps a cabin on the Mistawis. After passing him, Valancy can't resist shyly glancing back over her shoulder for another look at the famous artist. He looks back and his eyes light up at the sight of Valancy with her arms overflowing with flowers, against a backdrop of sunlit pines. The next day when she returns from another flower gathering excursion, Barney tells her that he's had a visit from Tierney, who wanted permission to paint Valancy. The shock causes her to drop her flowers:
"But--but--" stammered Valancy, "Allan Tierney never paints any but--any but--"
"Beautiful women," finished Barney. "Conceded. Q. E. D., Mistress Barney Snaith is a beautiful woman."
"Nonsense," said Valancy, stooping to retrieve her arbutus. "You know that's nonsense, Barney. I know I'm a heap better-looking than I was a year ago, but I'm not beautiful."
"Allan Tierney never makes a mistake," said Barney. "You forget, Moonlight, that there are different kinds of beauty. Your imagination is obsessed by the very obvious type of your cousin Olive. Oh, I've seen her--she's a stunner--but you'd never catch Allan Tierney wanting to paint her. In the horrible but expressive slang phrase, she keeps all her goods in the shop-window. But in your subconscious mind you have a conviction that nobody can be beautiful who doesn't look like Olive. Also, you remember your face as it was in the days when your soul was not allowed to shine through it. Tierney said something about the curve of your cheek as you looked back over your shoulder. You know I've often told you it was distracting. And he's quite batty about your eyes. If I wasn't absolutely sure it was solely professional--he's really a crabbed old bachelor, you know--I'd be jealous."
"Well, I don't want to be painted," said Valancy. "I hope you told him that."
"I couldn't tell him that. I didn't know what you wanted. But I told him I didn't want my wife painted--hung up in a salon for the mob to stare at. Belonging to another man. For of course I couldn't buy the picture. So even if you had wanted to be painted, Moonlight, your tyrannous husband would not have permitted it. Tierney was a bit squiffy. He isn't used to being turned down like that. His requests are almost like royalty's."
This statement fills Valancy with happiness because it confirms to her that Barney does indeed like her. She's always been a bit worried in the back of her mind that he's just being kind to her, wanting her to be happy in her last year of life but secretly looking forward to being independent again. His words put this worry to rest, and Valancy thinks that now she can die happy and fulfilled. It also occurs to her that she hasn't had a heart attack in a while- not since a day or two before Barney was caught in the storm at the end of March. She decides that this probably means that her body has stopped fighting her illness and the end is drawing near; the year that Dr Trent had said she probably had left will soon be over. She vows that she will remember Barney throughout eternity, and that he really, truly liked her.