There was no rebellion in her, no hope of gain in what she did. Love was of her own soul alone, since that evening by the factory when she had seen the factor bend his head and kiss the little Francette.
No more did she think of his words in the forest, no more did she dream of the wondrous glory of that first kiss.
Far apart and impersonal was McElroy now,--only she loved him with that vast idolatry which seeks naught but the good of its idol.
Even if he loved Francette he must be saved for that happiness.
Therefore she knelt in a cockleshell alone on a rushing river and sped through, a wilderness into appalling danger.
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.
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.
It was the same thing that had changed for her the face of the waters and the wood. She had learned in that moment to read a man better than she had read aught in her life beside the sign of leaf and wind.
“Oh, M'sieu!” she cried out sharply; “God forbid!”
The youth came forward and took the sticks from her, dropping them on the ground and holding both her hands in a trembling clasp.
“Forbid?” he said and his voice quivered; “Ma'amselle, I love you. Though my heart is full of dread, I am at your feet. By the voice of my own soul I hear the cry of yours. We are both past help, it seems, Ma'amselle,-yet am I that stone to your foot which we pledged yonder by the stockade wall. You will let me go the long trail with you? You will give me to be your stay in this? You will let me do all a man can do to help you take the factor from the Nakonkirhirinons?”