Conover’s first day at the Antlers was pleasant; for he and Desirée were together from morning to night. He was welcomed with effusive cordiality by Jack Hawarden; with graceful tolerance by the lad’s mother. The big tent wherein he was quartered was near enough to the Hawarden cottage to make the trip to and fro seem as nothing. More and more strongly as the day wore on did he feel as though he had reached some long-sought Mecca. The beauty of the “top of the world” was lost on him; but the beauty of the girl had in a moment became an integral part of his every thought. He was dully surprised at himself. Heretofore he had always taken Desirée as much for granted as he had taken the sunlight itself. To her he had turned for whatever was happiest and restful in his life; had done it unthinkingly, as part of his established routine. But now, after two months of separation from her, he grasped for the first time all her presence had meant to him.
The mighty silences of the mountains—the tumbled miles of multi-shaded green, strewn with fire-blue lakes—all these carried no message to the hard-headed Fighter, the man of cities. But ever he caught himself staring at Desirée in awed wonder; as though some veil between them had of a sudden been snatched away.
That first afternoon he and she went for a long walk where the twisting red-brown trail wound half aimlessly through the still forest; and she lectured him with a sternness that he found delicious, upon his lack of appreciation for the vistas, nooks and leafy sanctums she pointed out. Before supper she made him take her out on the lake, in one of the long, slender guide-boats, whose over-lapping oar handles he found so hard to manage. In midstream she bade him stop rowing, and pointed to the west. Against a green-gold background of sky, long crimson cloud-streamers flickered.
“It looks as if the wind were on fire,” she breathed in ecstasy.
And he, after a perfunctory glance and a word of acquiescence, bent again to his oars. The lake was dotted with boats of the “sunset fleet.” The occupants of a dark blue St. Lawrence skiff hailed them. Caleb, in obedience to Desirée’s gesture rowed closer. The oarsman of the other boat proved to be Jack Hawarden who was returning with his mother from a climb of the Crags.
“Isn’t this sunset well worth traveling all the way from Granite to see?” called Jack.
“It is kind of pretty,” assented Caleb.
“‘Pretty!’” repeated Mrs. Hawarden in gentle scorn. “What a word for such a scene! It brings out all that is highest and most beautiful in one!” she went on soulfully. “I wish, instead of rowing back to the Antlers to supper, I might drift on here forever.”
“You’d be li’ble to get rather hungry after a few hours of it, I guess,” volunteered Caleb, feeling he was somehow beyond his depth.