clouded for a moment as her eyes rested upon his.

"Your civilization is coming north to spoil it all," she added, and
turned to the rock table.

Philip dropped his load.

"Supper is ready," she said, and the cloud had passed.

It was Jeanne's first reference to his own people, to the invasion of
civilization into the north, and there recurred to Philip the words in
which she had cried out her hatred against Churchill. But Jeanne did
not betray herself again. She was quiet while they were eating, and
Philip saw that she was very tired. When they had finished, they sat
for a few minutes watching the lowering flames of the fire. Darkness
had gathered about them. Their faces and the rock were illumined more
and more faintly as the embers died down. A silence fell upon them. In
the banskians close behind them an owl hooted softly, a cautious,
drumming note, as though the night-bird possessed still a fear of the
newly dead day. The brush gave out sound--voices infinitesimally small,
strange quiverings, rustlings that might have been made by wind, by
breath, by shadows, almost. Overhead the tips of the spruce and tall
pines whispered among themselves, as they never commune by day. Spirits
seemed to move among them, sending down to Jeanne's and Philip's
listening ears a restful, sleepy murmur. Farther back there sounded a
deep sniff, where a moose, traveling the well-worn trail, stopped in
sudden fear and wonder at the strange man-scent which came to its
nostrils. And still farther, from some little lake nameless and
undiscovered in the black depths of the forest to the south, a great
northern loon sent out its cowardly cry of defiance to all night
things, and then plunged deep under water, as though frightened into
the depths by its own mad jargon. The fire died lower. Philip moved a
little nearer to the girl, whose breathing he could hear.

"Jeanne," he said, softly, fighting to keep himself from touching her
hand, "I know what you mean--I understand. Two years ago I gave up
civilization for this. I am glad that I wrote to you as I did, for now
you will believe me and know that I understand. I love this world up
here as you love it. I am never going back again."

Jeanne was silent.

"But there is one thing, at least one--which I cannot understand in
you," he went on, nerving himself for what might come a moment later.
"You are of this world--you hate civilization--and yet you have brought
a man into the north to tea