able. She
seated herself in the hammock and took from the basket a bit of lace
work. For a moment he watched her fingers flashing in and out with the
needles.

Perhaps his thought went to her. He was almost frightened as he saw her
cheeks coloring under the long, dark lashes. He faced the rivermen
again, and while he gripped at his own weakness, he tried to count the
flashings of their oars. And behind him, the beautiful eyes of St.
Pierre's wife were looking at him with a strange glow in their depths.

"Do you know," he said, speaking slowly and still looking toward the
flashing of the oars, "something tells me that unexpected things are
going to happen when St. Pierre returns. I am going to make a bet with
him that I can whip Bateese. He will not refuse. He will accept. And
St. Pierre will lose, because I shall whip Bateese. It is then that
these unexpected things will begin to happen. And I am wondering--after
they do happen--if you will care so very much?"

There was a moment of silence. And then, "I don't want you to fight
Bateese," she said.

The needles were working swiftly when he turned toward her again, and a
second time the long lashes shadowed what a moment before he might have
seen in her eyes.

XIII

The morning passed like a dream to Carrigan. He permitted himself to
live and breathe it as one who finds himself for a space in the heart
of a golden mirage. He was sitting so near Marie-Anne that now and then
the faint perfume of her came to him like the delicate scent of a
flower. It was a breath of crushed violets, sweet as the air he was
breathing, violets gathered in the deep cool of the forest, a whisper
of sweetness about her, as if on her bosom she wore always the living
flowers. He fancied her gathering them last bloom-time, a year ago,
alone, her feet seeking out the damp mosses, her little fingers
plucking the smiling and laughing faces of the violet flowers to be
treasured away in fragrant sachets, as gentle as the wood-thrush's
note, compared with the bottled aromas fifteen hundred miles south. It
seemed to be a physical part of her, a thing born of the glow in her
cheeks, a living exhalation of her soft red lips--and yet only when he
was near, very near, did the life of it reach him.

She did not know he was thinking these things. There was nothing in his
voice, he thought, to betray him. He was sure she was unconscious of
the fight he was making. Her eyes smiled and laughed wit