eded down her cheeks.

Chapter Fourteen

Slower and slower her paddle dipped, lower and lower hung her head,
faster and faster flowed her tears. The instinctive recoil, the
passionate resentment had gone. In the bitterness of her spirit
she knew not what she thought except that she would give her soul
to see him again, to feel the touch of his lips once more. For she
could not make herself believe that this would ever come to pass.
He had gone like a phantom, like a dream, and the mists of life had
closed about him, showing no sign. He had vanished, and at once
she seemed to know that the episode was finished.

The canoe whispered against the soft clay bottom. She had arrived,
though how the crossing had been made she could not have told.
Slowly and sorrowfully she disembarked. Languidly she drew the
light craft beyond the stream's eager fingers. Then, her forces at
an end, she huddled down on the ground and gave herself up to
sorrow.

The life of the forest went on as though she were not there. A big
owl far off said hurriedly his _whoo-whoo-whoo_, as though he had
the message to deliver and wanted to finish the task. A smaller
owl near at hand cried _ko-ko-ko-oh_ with the intonation of a tin
horn. Across the river a lynx screamed, and was answered at once
by the ululations of wolves. On the island the _giddes_ howled
defiance. Then from above, clear, spiritual, floated the whistle
of shore birds arriving from the south. Close by sounded a rustle
of leaves, a sharp squeak; a tragedy had been consummated, and the
fierce little mink stared malevolently across the body of his
victim at the motionless figure on the beach.

Virginia, drowned in grief, knew of none of these things. She was
seeing again the clear brown face of the stranger, his curly brown
hair, his steel eyes, and the swing of his graceful figure. Now he
fronted the wondering _voyageurs_, one foot raised against the bow
of the _brigade_ canoe; now he stood straight and tall against the
light of the sitting-room door; now he emptied the vials of his
wrath and contempt on Archibald Crane's reverend head; now he
passed in the darkness, singing gayly the _chanson de canot_. But
more fondly she saw him as he swept his hat to the ground on
discovering her by the guns, as he bent his impassioned eyes on her
in the dim lamplight of their first interview, as he tossed his hat
aloft in the air when he had understood that she would be in
Q