With the gliding days he could think of Maren without the poignant pain
which had been unbearable at the beginning, could linger in thought
over each .detail of her wondrous beauty, the clear dark eyes, sane and
earnest and full of the hope of the dreamer, the full red mouth with
its sweetness of curled corners, the black hair banded above the smooth
brow, the rounded figure under the faded garment, the shoulders
swinging with the free walk after the fashion of a man.
Verily, the wilderness held healing as well as hurt.
So followed each other the dawns and the summer noons and the
marvellous twilights, with pageantry of light and colour and soft winds
attuned to the songs of birds, and the two men neared the mystery of
Fate.
CHAPTER XVII THE COMPELLING POWER
Back in De Seviere the gloom of the forest in bleak winter sat heavily
on every cabin.
Women went about with misty eyes and men were oddly silent.
Not one of all his people who did not love the whole-hearted factor
with his ready laugh, his sympathy in all the little life of the post,
his unfailing justice; not one who did not strive to keep away the
haunting visions of leaping flames above fagots, and all the ugly
scenes that imagination, abetted by grim reality, could conjure up.
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