"Nay, Micene," smiled Maren, "these latest Indians come from the
south."
"And all is well with the plans?"
The vague uneasiness was not stilled in Micene.
"All is well with the plans. There is not a year now."
The girl looked straight in her friend's eyes without a trace of the
dazed misery which Marc Dupre had surprised in her own.
Micene smiled back, but that night she lay far into the dark hours
thinking of the subtle change in the maid of the trail. With a woman's
intuition she knew that the girl had lied, that all was not well with
her.
And one other there was of that small party of venturers housed in the
new cabins of De Seviere who knew vaguely that something had gone
wrong-Prix Laroux, the sturdy prow of that little vessel of progress of
which the girl was the beating heart, the unresting engine.
He had felt its coming even before it fell, that mighty shadow which
blotted out the heavens and the earth, for to Maren, once given, there
was no recalling the gift, and with that day in the glade she had lost
possession of her soul and body forever.
Dazed in all the regions of her being, enshadowed in every vista of
hope and scarce-tasted joy, she went quietly about the cabin, her mind
a dark space in which there flashed sudden, reiterated visions,--now
McElroy's blue eyes, anxious and eager as he held up the doeskin dress
at the door-sill, burning with fire and truth and passion in the glade
in the forest, again tender and diffident what time they walked
together to the gate to meet De Courtenay's messenger, and again it was
that scene at the factory steps that haunted her,--McElroy with his
arms about Francette Moline, the grey husky crouching in the twilight.
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