ittle
Missioner's triumph. "I told you what this north country could do for
you," was his exultant slogan; "I told you!"

Once David was on the point of telling him that he could see only the
tenth part of what it had done for him, but the old shame held his
tongue. He did not want to bring up the old story. The fact that it had
existed, and had written itself out in human passion, remained with him
still as a personal and humiliating degradation. It was like a scar on
his own body, a repulsive sore which he wished to keep out of sight,
even from the eyes of the man who had been his salvation. The growth of
this revulsion within him had kept pace with his physical improvement,
and if at the end of these ten days Father Roland had spoken of the
woman who had betrayed him--the woman who had been his wife--he would
have turned the key on that subject as decisively as the Missioner had
banned further conversation or conjecture about Tavish. This was,
perhaps, the best evidence that he had cut out the cancer in his breast.
The Golden Goddess, whom he had thought an angel, he now saw stripped of
her glory. If she had repented in that room, if she had betrayed fear
even, a single emotion of mental agony, he would not have felt so sure
of himself. But she had laughed. She was, like Tavish, a devil. He
thought of her beauty now as that of a poisonous flower. He had
unwittingly touched such a flower once, a flower of wonderful waxen
loveliness, and it had produced a pustular eruption on his hand. She was
like that. Poisonous. Treacherous. A creature with as little soul as
that flower had perfume. It was this change in him, in his conception
and his memory of her, that he would have given much to have Father
Roland understand.

During this period of his own transformation he had observed a curious
change in Father Roland. At times, after leaving Tavish's cabin, the
Little Missioner seemed struggling under the weight of a deep and gloomy
oppression. Once or twice, in the firelight, it had looked almost like
sickness, and David had seen his face grow wan and old. Always after
these fits of dejection there would follow a reaction, and for hours the
Missioner would be like one upon whom had fallen a new and sudden
happiness. As day added itself to day, and night to night, the periods
of depression became shorter and less frequent, and at last Father
Roland emerged from them altogether, as though he had been fighting a
great fight, a