"I love you," he told her simply. He watched her face, as intently as the three Wise Men watched the East, for a sign. And he saw it, clear and ineffably wonderful, in the stars that came into her eyes.
"I love you," she answered, with equal simplicity. They lay a while in silence, blissful in this wonder each had for the other, wholly content just that their hands and lips should touch.
The same miracle was upon them both; and the girl's thought, ranging far, seized upon a deep and moving discovery. "All this belongs to us," she told him, indicating with one movement of her arm the boundless solitudes about them. "This is our own country, isn't it, Ben? We can't ever—go away."
It was true: they could never leave the forest for long. They were its children, bred in the bone. Their strong thews would waste in a gentler land. It was their heritage. They must not go where they could not behold the dark line of the forest against the sky.
The fire burned down. The moon wheeled through the sky. The tall spruce saw the dawn afar and beckoned.
THE END.