leaping streams,--I have breathed
the sweet air of its forests and gazed on its beauties since my early
childhood, in dreams, always in dreams, M'sieu, until I could bear the
strain no longer. And now, when it beckons almost within my reach, when
its very breath seems in my nostrils, I must stop for a year's space!
You know, M'sieu,--you comprehend?"

She leaned forward looking earnestly into McElroy's eyes, and a surge
of painful ecstasy shot to the man's heart, so near she seemed in the
suddenly created sympathy of the moment, so near and gracious, so strong
in her pure passion, so infinitely sweet.

"I know," he said, and his voice sounded strange in his ears; "I know
every pulse of your heart, Ma'amselle, every longing of your spirit,
every pure thought of your mind,--for these many days I have trembled to
every vibration that has touched or thrilled you. Oh, Ma'amselle!"

With the surge of that overwhelming thing within him the young man had
forgot all things,--that this girl was near a stranger, that he had
quaked at his temerity of the gift, forgot all but that she leaned
toward him with the mist in her wide eyes, and he strode forward the
step between them, his arms reaching out instinctively to enfold her.

With the swiftness of the impulse he swept her into them until the eager
face lay on his breast, the smooth black braids pressing his lips with
their satiny folds.

For one intoxicating moment he held her, as the primal man takes and
holds his woman, tightly against his beating heart as though he would
defy the world, lost in a sea of strange new emotions that rolled in
golden billows high above his head.

Then from the depths there came a cry that cleared his whirling brain,
a very embodiment of startled amaze, of indefinable horror, of mixed
intonations.

"M'sieu!"

Maren Le Moyne wrenched herself free and lifted her face to look at him.

It was a warring field.

Upon it lay a great astonishment, a wonder, and a newness. Behind these
there came, creeping swiftly with each moment of her startled gaze, an
odd excitement that mounted with each panting breath that left his lips,
for it was from him that it took its life. Her red mouth dropped apart,
showing the gleam of the white teeth between. She looked like a child
rudely shaken from its sleep, startled, perhaps vaguely frightened at
the strange shapes of familiar things distorted by the vision not yet
adjusted.

"M'sieu!" she stammered; "M'si