rself from crying out her outraged protests. All her dormant
womanhood, stirring to wakefulness in the last few weeks, broke into
life, gathering itself in a passion of revolt, abhorrent of the
indignity, ready to flare into vehement refusal. To the dim eyes
fastened on her she was merely the girl, reluctant still. He watched
her down-drooped face and said:

"Then I could go in peace. Am I asking too much?"

She made a negative movement with her head and turned her face away
from him.

"You'll do this for my happiness now?"

"Anything," she murmured.

"It will be also for your own."

He moved his free hand and clasped it on the mound made by their locked
fingers. Through the stillness a man's voice singing Zavier's Canadian
song came to them. It stopped at the girl's outer ear, but, like a
hail from a fading land, penetrated to the man's brain and he stirred.

"Hist!" he said raising his brows, "there's that French song your
mother used to sing."

The distant voice rose to the plaintive burden and he lay motionless,
his eyes filmed with memories. As the present dimmed the past grew
clearer. His hold on the moment relaxed and he slipped away from it on
a tide of recollection, muttering the words.

The girl sat mute, her hand cold under his, her being passing in an
agonized birth throe from unconsciousness to self-recognition. Her
will--its strength till now unguessed--rose resistant, a thing of iron.
Love was too strong in her for open opposition, but the instinct to
fight, blindly but with caution, for the right to herself was stronger.

His murmuring died into silence and she looked at him. His eyes were
closed, the pressure of his fingers loosened. A light sleep held him,
and under its truce she softly withdrew her hand, then stole to the
tent door and stood there a waiting moment, stifling her hurried
breathing. She saw David lying by the fire, gazing into its smoldering
heart. With noiseless feet she skirted the encircling ropes and pegs,
and stood, out of range of his eye, on the farther side. Here she
stopped, withdrawn from the light that came amber soft through the
canvas walls, slipping into shadow when a figure passed, searching the
darkness with peering eyes.

Around her the noises of the camp rose, less sharp than an hour
earlier, the night silence gradually hushing them. The sparks and
shooting gleams of fires still quivered, imbued with a tenacious life.
She had a momentary gli