speaking the words to
herself. She turned to him again, and something of faith, of hope
transfigured her face.

"Return to your fire and your prunes," she said quickly, and the
sunlight of a smile passed over her lips. "Then, half an hour from now,
come up the coulee to the turn in the rocks. You will find me there."

She bent quickly and picked up the little bag and the brush from the
sand. Without looking at him again she sped swiftly beyond the big
rock, and Philip's last vision of her was the radiant glory of her hair
as it rippled cloudlike behind her in the sunlight.

CHAPTER THREE

That he had actually passed through the experience of the last few
minutes, that it was a reality and not some beautiful phantasm of the
red and gold world which again lay quiet and lifeless about him, Philip
could scarcely convince himself as he made his way back to the canoe
and the fire. The discovery of this girl, buried six hundred miles in a
wilderness that was almost a terra incognita to the white man, was
sufficient to bewilder him. And only now, as he kicked the burning
embers from under the pails, and looked at his watch to time himself,
did he begin to realize that he had not sensed a hundredth part of the
miracle of it.

Now that he was alone, question after question leapt unanswered through
his mind, and every vein in his body throbbed with strange excitement.
Not for an instant did he doubt what she had said. This world--the
forests about him, the lakes, the blue skies above, were her home. And
yet, struggling vainly for a solution of the mystery, he told himself
in the next breath that this could not be possible. Her voice had
revealed nothing of the wilderness--except in its sweetness. Not a
break had marred the purity of her speech. She had risen before him
like the queen of some wonderful kingdom, and not like a forest girl.
And in her face he had seen the soul of one who had looked upon the
world as the world lived outside of its forest walls. Yet he believed
her. This was her home. Her hair, her eyes, the flowerlike
lithesomeness of her beautiful body--and something more, something that
he could not see but which he could FEEL in her presence, told him that
this was so. This wonder-world about him was her home. But why--how?

He seated himself on a rock, holding the open watch in his hand. Of one
thing he was sure. She was oppressed by a strange fear. It was not the
fear of being alone, of being lost,