Such was the compelling power of that love which had come tardily to
her.
CHAPTER XVIII "I AM A STONE TO YOUR FOOT, MA'AMSELLE"
At dawn Maren shot her craft into a little cove, opal and pearl in the
pageantry of breaking light, and drawing it high on shore, went
gathering little sticks for a micmac fire.
The bullet pouch held small allowance of food. She would eat and sleep
for a few hours.
Deep and ghostly with white mist-wraiths was the forest, shouldering
close to the living water, pierced with pine, shadowy with trembling
maple, waist-high with ferns. She looked about with the old love of the
wild stirring dumbly under the greater feeling that weighted her soul
with iron and wondered vaguely what had come over the woods and the
waters that their familiar faces were changed.
With her arms full of dead sticks she came back to the canoe,--and face
to face with Marc Dupre. His canoe lay at the cove's edge and his eyes
were anguished in a white face.
"Ma'amselle," he said simply, "I came."
No word was ready on the maid's lips. She stood and looked at him, with
the little sticks in her arms, and suddenly she saw what was in his
eyes, what made his lips ashen under the weathered tan.
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