repeated Virginia, as he hesitated.

"Ah, I don't go back empty-handed!" he tried. Her heart stood
still, then leaped in anticipation of what he would say. Her soul
hungered for the words, the words that should not only comfort her,
but should be to her the excuse for many things. She saw
him--shadowy, graceful against the dim gray of the river and
sky--lean ever so slightly toward her. But then he straightened
again to his paddle, and contented himself with repeating merely:
"Quebec--in August, then."

The canoe grated. Ned Trent with an exclamation drove his paddle
into the clay.

"Lucky the bottom is soft here," said he; "I did not realize we
were so close ashore."

He drew the canoe up on the shelving beach, helped Virginia out,
took his rifle, and so stood ready to depart.

"Leave the canoe just where we got in," he advised; "it is around
the point, you see, and that may fool them a. little."

"You are going." she said, dully. Then she came close to him and
looked up at him with her wonderful eyes. "Good-by."

"Good-by," said he.

Was this to be all? Had he nothing more to tell her? Was the word
to lack, the word she needed so much? She had given herself
unreservedly into this man's hands, and at parting he had no more
to say to her than "Good-by." Virginia's eyes were tearful, but
she would not let him know that. She felt that her heart would
break.

"Well, good-by," he said again after a moment, which he had spent
inspecting the heavens. "Ah, you don't know what it is to be free!
By to-morrow morning I shall be half-way to the Mattagami. I can
hardly wait to see it, for then I am safe! And then nex; day--why,
next day they won't know which of a dozen ways I've gone!" He was
full of the future, man fashion.

He took her hands, leaned over, and lightly kissed her on the
mouth. Instantly Virginia became wildly and unreasonably angry.
She could not have told herself why, but it was the lack of the
word she had wanted so much, the pain of feeling that he could go
like that, the thwarted bitterness of a longing that had grown
stronger than she had even yet realized.

Instinctively she leaped into the canoe, sending it spinning from
the bank.

"Ah, you had no _right_ to do that!" she cried. "I gave you no
_right_!"

Then, heedless of what he was saying, she began to paddle straight
from the shore, weeping bitterly, her face upraised, her hair in
her eyes, and the tears coursing unhe