not a--Jezebel?"

For a moment an awful silence fell upon the three, and they could hear
the myriad sounds of the evening camp round about.

Then Maren, her eyes wide in amaze, said stupidly:

"Eh,--Madame?"

And the Irishwoman cried: "Frances! For shame!"

But the other was very much composed.

"I am right, all the same,--what woman of modesty would follow a man to
the wilderness, confessing brazenly her love? You haven't noticed any
hysterics on my part over it,--nor will you. I think it all a very open
scandal."

The little woman was flying into a rage of tumbled words and hopeless
brogue, but Maren Le Moyne, the blood red to her temples, rose silently,
took the pot of broth, and walked away, and never in her life did she
hold herself so tall and straight.

As she knelt beside the blanket bed of McElroy, and lifted his helpless
head, her eyes were burning sombrely.

"This, too?" she was saying dumbly, within herself. "Is this, too, part
of the lesson of life?"

And all through the days that followed, long warm days, with the songs
of birds from the gliding shores, the ripple of waters beneath the prow
of a canoe, she sat beside the unconscious man and looked at him with
dumb yearning.

For love of him,--what would she not have done, what would she not do
still for love of him,--he who had sold her for a kiss; and for it there
came something,--she could not define it,--something that seemed to live
in the atmosphere, to taint the glory of the sunshine, to speak under
every word and whisper.

Never again did she cook at the fire with the others, but had her own
on the outskirts, and Sheila O'Halloran came and cooked with her, talked
and comforted and hovered about Anders McElroy where he lay in a silence
like death, his fair face flushed with fever and his strong hands
plucking at everything within their reach.

"Don't ye worry, dear, he'll not die. 'Twouldn't be accordin' to th'
rights av life,--not afther all ye've done f'r him. He'll opin his
blessid eyes some day an' know ye, an' Heaven itself will not be like
thim f'r glory."

But Maren only looked tragically down upon him.

What would they say, those eyes that she had thought so earnest, so
all-deserving in their eager honesty, if they should open to her alone?

Would they lie as they had done before, with the thought of Francette
behind their blue clearness?

Ah, well,--it was all in the day's march.

This day at noon camp she came upon,