"Yes, father."

"You are no longer a child, but a woman. Would you like to go to
Quebec?"

She did not answer him at once, but pondered beneath close-knit brows.

"Do you wish me to go, father?" she asked at length.

"You are eighteen. It is time you saw the world, time you learned the
ways of other people. But the journey is hard. I may not see you again
for some years. You go among strangers."

He fell silent again. Motionless he had been, except for the mumbling
of his lips beneath his beard.

"It shall be just as you wish," he added a moment later.

At once a conflict arose in the girl's mind between her restless
dreams and her affections. But beneath all the glitter of the question
there was really nothing to take her out. Here was her father, here
were the things she loved; yonder was novelty--and loneliness.

Her existence at Conjuror's House was perhaps a little complex, but it
was familiar. She knew the people, and she took a daily and unwearying
delight in the kindness and simplicity of their bearing toward
herself. Each detail of life came to her in the round of habit,
wearing the garment of accustomed use. But of the world she knew
nothing except what she had been able to body forth from her reading,
and that had merely given her imagination something tangible with
which to feed her self-distrust.

"Must I decide at once?" she asked.

"If you go this year, it must be with the Abitibi _brigade_. You have
until then."

"Thank you, father," said the girl, sweetly.

The shadows stole their surroundings one by one, until only the bright
silver of the tea-service, and the glitter of polished wood, and the
square of the open door remained. Galen Albret became an inert dark
mass. Virginia's gray was lost in that of the twilight.

Time passed. The clock ticked on. Faintly sounds penetrated from the
kitchen, and still more faintly from out of doors. Then the rectangle
of the doorway was darkened by a man peering uncertainly. The man wore
his hat, from which slanted a slender heron's plume; his shoulders
were square; his thighs slim and graceful. Against the light, one
caught the outline of the sash's tassel and the fringe of his
leggings.

"Are you there, Galen Albret?" he challenged.

The spell of twilight mystery broke. It seemed as if suddenly the air
had become surcharged with the vitality of opposition.

"What then?" countered the Factor's heavy, deliberate tones.

"True, I see you now," rej