those short blue
nights under the velvet sky, one image had stood before him, calm,
smiling, quivering with that illusive light which held men's hearts.
Never a day that he could win forgetfulness of the face of Maren Le
Moyne, and now he glanced toward her doorway. It lay in the sunlight
without a foot upon its sill, and Marc sighed unconsciously. He was not
to see her, perhaps, to-day.

But suddenly, as he rounded a corner among the cabins, he came full
upon her, and his flippant tongue clove to the roof of his mouth without
speech.

She came toward him with a bread-pan in her hands and her eyes were cast
down. The heart in him ran to water at sight of her, and he stopped.

Once more thought of his unworthiness abased him.

Then she felt his presence and raised her eyes, and the young trapper
looked deep into them with that helplessness which draws the look of a
child. Deep he looked and long, and the woman looked back, and in that
moment there sprang into life the first thrill of that thing which was
to lead to the great crisis which she had predicted that day by the
stockade.

With it Marc Dupre found his tongue.

"Ma'amselle!" he cried sharply, "what is it? Mon Dieu! What is it?"
For the dark eyes, with their light-behind-black-marble splendour, were
quenched and dazed and all knowledge seemed stricken from them. The look
of them cut to his very soul, quick and sensitive from the working
of the great change, made ready as a wind-harp by the silent days of
dreams, the nights of visions. To him alone was the devastation within
them apparent. He stretched out a timid hand and touched her sleeve.

"What is it, Ma'amselle?" he begged abjectly. "I would heal it with my
blood!"

Extravagant, impulsive, the boy was in deadly earnest, and Maren Le
Moyne was conscious of it as simply as that she lived.

Just as simply she acknowledged to him what she would have to none other
in De Seviere, that something had fallen from a clear sky.

"Nay," she said, and the deep voice was lifeless, "I am beyond help."

Dupre's fingers slipped, trembling, around her arm.

"But I am a stone to your foot, Ma'amselle,--always remember that. When
the way becomes too hard there shall be a stone to your foot. I ask no
better fate and you have said."

The miserable eyes were not dead to everything. At his swift words they
glowed a moment.

"Aye,--I have said, and I thank God, M'sieu, for such friendship. I am
rich, indeed."

"Oh