fter a pause. Pauline remained
silent, placing a little bottle of cordial before their visitor, with
which he presently regaled himself, raising his glass with an air.

"Many happy returns to us both!" he said, and threw the liquor down his
throat, smacked his lips, and drew his hand down his great moustache and
beard like some vast animal washing its face with its paw. Smiling
and yet not at ease, he looked at the two women and nodded his head
encouragingly, but whether the encouragement was for himself or for them
he could not have told.

His last words, however, had altered the situation. The girl had caught
at a suggestion in them which startled her. This rough white plainsman
was come to make love to her, and to say--what? He was at once awkward
and confident, afraid of her, of her refinement, grace, beauty, and
education, and yet confident in the advantage of his position, a
white man bending to a half-breed girl. He was not conscious of the
condescension and majesty of his demeanour, but it was there, and his
untutored words and ways must make it all too apparent to the girl. The
revelation of the moment made her at once triumphant and humiliated.
This white man had come to make love to her, that was apparent; but that
he, ungrammatical, crude, and rough, should think he had but to put
out his hand, and she in whom every subtle emotion and influence had
delicate response, whose words and ways were as far removed from his as
day from night, would fly to him, brought the flush of indignation to
her cheek. She responded to his toast with a pleasant nod, however, and
said:

"But if you will keep coming in such wild storms, there will not be many
anniversaries." Laughing, she poured out another glass of liquor for
him.

"Well, now, p'r'aps you're right, and so the only thing to do is not to
keep coming, but to stay--stay right where you are."

The Indian woman could not see her daughter's face, which was turned to
the fire, but she herself smiled at John Alloway, and nodded her head
approvingly. Here was the cure for her own trouble and loneliness.
Pauline and she, who lived in different worlds, and yet were tied to
each other by circumstances they could not control, would each work
out her own destiny after her own nature, since John Alloway had come
a-wooing. She would go back on the Warais, and Pauline would remain at
the Portage, a white woman with her white man. She would go back to the
smoky fires in the h