It was an open secret now, communicated by Wallace to the factor, that he was to become a Catholic that autumn, and in June take Julie Breton as a bride away to East Main.
During the tense days when the fever heightened and the life of Jean Marcel hung on the turn of a leaf, there had been no repetition of the visit of Fleur to the sick room. But so loudly did she wail her complaint at her enforced absence from the man battling for his life, so near in the Mission house, that it was necessary to confine her with her puppies at a distance.
Once again conscious of his surroundings and rapidly gaining strength, Marcel insisted on seeing his dog. So, daily, under watchful guard, Fleur was taken into the room, often with a clumsy puppy, round and fluffy, who alternately nibbled with needle-pointed milk-teeth at Jean's extended hand, making a great to-do of snarling in mock anger, or rolled squealing on its back on the floor, while Fleur sprawled contentedly by the cot, tail beating the floor, love in her slant eyes for the master who now had found his voice, whose face once more shone with the old smile, which was her life.
CHAPTER XXXIII
RENUNCIATION
August drew to a close. The post clearing and the beach at Whale River were again bare of tepee and lodge of the hunters of fur who had repaired to their summer camps where fish were plentiful, to wait for the great flights of snowy geese that the first frosts would drive south from Arctic Islands. Daily the vitality and youth of Marcel were giving him back his strength, and no remonstrance of the Bretons availed to keep him quiet once his legs had mastered the distance to the trade-house. Except for a slight pallor in the lean face and the loss of weight, due to confinement, to his friends he was once more the Jean Marcel they had known, but for weeks, a sudden twisting of his firm mouth marking a twinge in the back, recalled only too vividly to them all the knife-thrust of Lelac.
When, rid of the fever, and again conscious, Jean had become strong enough to talk, he repeatedly voiced his gratitude to Julie for her loyalty as nurse, but she invariably covered his mouth with her hand refusing to hear him. Grown stronger and sitting up, he had often repeated his thanks, raising his face to hers with a twinkle in his dark eyes, in the hope that her manner of suppressing him might be continued; but she had tantalizingly refused to humor the convalescent.