and he imagined her
as stretched upon its banks in the summer shadows. And he thought of
the schoolhouse in London, and the little heart-weary child who had
penned that letter there. He re-read it, and then once again re-read
it, suffering the same agony of longing for things irrecoverable which
this small creature had suffered years ago, who was now beyond all
knowledge of pain. What a mystery it was that across that expanse of
space and years her letter should have drifted down to him, from
London to Keewatin, carried over the last few yards of its journey in
the breast of a man who was already dead. It made him feel less of an
exile that a miracle like that could happen--it was almost as though
she herself had appealed to him from the hidden world. It made him ask
himself that question, which so many had asked before him, "_And are
we really ever dead_?"

Pere Antoine stirred, rose up and walked over to the window, where he
stood in the shadow, outside the circle of the lamp's rays, with his
back turned toward the younger man. There was something which he
wanted to say, but which he found difficult to express. Granger
guessed that, and so he said, "Antoine, you are thinking of _her_
to-night. She must have lived very long ago. Was she anything like the
portrait of this young girl?"

There was silence. Then, still gazing away from him, his long lean
figure blocking out the moonlight, the priest returned, "All white
women seem alike to one who has lived long in Keewatin. Yet that face
did seem very like to hers; but it is many years ago now, and I may
not remember her well. She died; and she was everything that was of
worth to me in this world. I begin to fear that she is all that I
count of highest value in the next."

"But why fear? I should not fear that."

"Because, being a missionary, with me it should be otherwise. I became
a Jesuit through distrust of myself. I knew, when she had been taken
from me, that because of my despair, if I did not bind myself strongly
to that which was highest, I should sink to that which was worst. And
I knew that if I sank to that which was worst, she would be lost to me
throughout all eternity. So, in order that God might give her to me
again in a future world, I strove to bribe Him; I asked that I might
be sent to this hardest of all fields of missionary labour, hoping
that thus I might acquire merit. Since then a new doubt has come to
haunt me, has been with me half a century;