d not
persist. Her passionate protests had come from her heart, he knew. He
did not dare to force himself on her when she was in that mood.

He sat down again on the church steps. He remained there in deep thought
until the red eyes in Dennis Kavanagh's house blinked out. He did not
find it easy to understand himself, exactly. His feelings had been
played upon too powerfully to permit calm consideration. He felt
confident in his affection for her. But her youth and the obstacles he
understood so well put marriage so out of immediate consideration that
he merely grieved rather than made definite plans for their future. With
moist eyes he looked up at the dark house on the hill and pledged
loyalty to the child-woman, knowing that he loved her. But that the love
was the love that mates man and woman for the struggles, the prizes, the
woes, and the contentment of life he was not sure--for he still looked
on Clare Kavanagh as more child than woman.

Marriage seemed yet a long way ahead of him. He rode slowly back to "The
Barracks." His problem seemed to be riding double with him. The problem,
one might say, was in the form of a maid on a pillion. But he did not
look behind to see whether the maid bore the features of Clare Kavanagh
or Madeleine Presson. At that moment he was sure that only Clare's image
rode with him. But in thinking of her he understood his limitations.
For, woodsman and unversed in the ways of women, he had not arrived at
that point in life where he could analyze even a boy's love, much less a
man's passion.

The next morning he left Fort Canibas with big Ben Kyle, to make a tour
of the Thornton camps. It was a trip that took in the cruising of a
township for standing timber on short rations and in the height of the
blackfly season, an experience not conducive to reflections on love and
matrimony.

But when he returned to Fort Canibas, on the eve of his departure to
take up his duties as General Waymouth's chief of staff, he saddled his
horse and rode across the long bridge.

This time there was no white figure on the church porch and no wistful
voice to call after him. He kept on up the hill. He was not thinking
about what Dennis Kavanagh might say to him. He had resolved to ask
Clare manfully if she would continue to trust him for a while until both
could be certain that their boy and girl love signified to them the love
that life needed for its bounty and its blessing. That seemed the honest
way.