her
hands.

"My Josephine," he cried softly.

She did not move as he bent down. Again he felt the warm, sweet thrill
of her lips. He would have kissed her again, have clasped her close in
his arms, but she drew away from him gently.

"I am glad you saw me--and followed, Philip," she said, her clear,
beautiful eyes meeting his. "It is a wonderful thing that has happened
to us. And we must talk about it. We must understand. I was on my way
to the pack. Will you come?"

She offered him her hand, so childishly confident, so free of her old
restraint now, that he took it without a word and fell in at her side.
He had rushed to her tumultuously. On his lips had been a hundred
things that he had wanted to say. He had meant to claim her in the full
ardour of his love--and now, quietly, without effort, she had worked a
wonderful change in him. It was as if their experience had not happened
yesterday, but yesteryear; and the calm, sweet yielding of her lips to
him again, the warm pressure of her hand, the illimitable faith in him
that shone in her eyes, filled him with emotions which for a space made
him speechless. It was as if some wonderful spirit had come to them
while they slept, so that now there was no necessity for explanation or
speech. In all the fulness of her splendid womanhood Josephine had
accepted his love, and had given him her own in return. Every fibre in
his being told him that this was so. And yet she had uttered no word of
love, and he had spoken none of the things that had been burning in his
soul.

They had gone but a few steps when Josephine paused close to the fallen
trunk of a huge cedar. With her mittened hands she brushed off the
snow, seated herself, and motioned Philip to sit beside her.

"Let us talk here," she said. And then she asked, a little anxiously,
"You left my father believing in you--in us?"

"Fully," replied Philip. He took her face between his two hands and
turned it up to him. Her fingers clasped his arms. But they made no
effort to pull down the hands that held her eyes looking straight into
his own.

"He believes in us," he repeated. "And you, Josephine, you love me?"

He saw the tremulous forming of a word on her lips, but she did not
speak. A deeper glow came into her eyes. Gently her fingers crept to
his wrists, and she took down his hands from her face, and drew him to
the seat at her side.

"Yes, Philip," she said then, in a voice so low and calm that it roused
a n