so finely to his
own. He had so borne himself as to wipe out all the social and external
inequalities between them. What she had given him, she had had to sue
him to take. But now that he had taken it, she knew herself a weak woman
on his breast, and she realised with a happy tremor that he would make
her no more apologies for his love, or for his story. Rather, he stood
upon that dignity she herself had given him--her lover, and the captain
of her life!

EPILOGUE

About nine months later than the events told in the last chapter, the
August sun, as it descended upon a lake in that middle region of the
northern Rockies which is known as yet only to the Indian trapper,
and--on certain tracks--to a handful of white explorers, shone on a boat
containing two persons--Anderson and Elizabeth. It was but twenty-four
hours since they had reached the lake, in the course of a long camping
expedition involving the company of two guides, a couple of half-breed
_voyageurs_, and a string of sixteen horses. No white foot had ever
before trodden the slender beaches of the lake; its beauty of forest and
water, of peak and crag, of sun and shadow, the terror of its storms,
the loveliness of its summer--only some stray Indian hunter, once or
twice in a century perhaps, throughout all the aeons of human history,
had ever beheld them.

But now, here were Anderson and Elizabeth!--first invaders of an
inviolate nature, pioneers of a long future line of travellers and
worshippers.

They had spent the day of summer sunshine in canoeing on the broad
waters, exploring the green bays, and venturing a long way up a
beautiful winding arm which seemed to lose itself in the bosom of superb
forest-skirted mountains, whence glaciers descended, and cataracts leapt
sheer into the glistening water. Now they were floating slowly towards
the little promontory where their two guides had raised a couple of
white tents, and the smoke of a fire was rising into the evening air.

Sunset was on the jagged and snow-clad heights that shut in the lake to
the eastward. The rose of the sky had been caught by the water and
interwoven with its own lustrous browns and cool blues; while
fathom-deep beneath the shining web of colour gleamed the reflected
snows and the forest slopes sliding downwards to infinity. A few
bird-notes were in the air--the scream of an eagle, the note of a
whip-poor-will, and far away across the lake a dense flight of wild duck
rose above