His companion made no immediate answer, but by and by she once more glanced up at him.
"I am really not used to climbing if Shafton is, and I am not going any further just now," she said.
A newly-felled cedar lay conveniently near the trail, but its wide-girthed trunk stood high above the underbrush, and Brooke dragged up a big hewn-off branch to make a footstool before his companion sat down on it. The branch was heavy, and she watched his efforts approvingly.
"Canada has made you another man. Now, I do not think Shafton could have done that in a day," she said. "Of course, he would never have tried, even to please me."
Brooke, who was by no means certain what she wished him to understand from this, leaned against a cedar looking down at her gravely. This was the woman who had embittered several years of his life, and for whom he had flung a good deal away, and now he was most clearly sensible of his folly. Had he met her in a drawing-room or even the Vancouver opera-house, it might not have been quite so apparent to him, but she seemed an anachronism in that strip of primeval wilderness. Nature was dominant there, and the dull pounding of the stamp-heads, which came faintly through the silence among the great trunks that had grown slowly during centuries, suggested man's recognition of the curse and privilege that was laid upon him in Eden. Graceful idleness was not esteemed in that country, where bread was won by strenuous toil, and the stillness and dimness of those great forest aisles emphasized the woman's artificial superficiality. Voice and gesture, befrizzled, straw-colored hair which he had once called golden, constricted waist, and figure which was suggestively wooden in its curves, enforced the same impression, until the man, who realized that she had after all probably made at least as good a use of life as he had, turned his eyes away.
"You really couldn't expect him to," he said, with a little laugh. "He has never had to do anything of that kind for a living as I have."
He held up his hands and noticed her little shiver as she saw the scarred knuckles, hard, ingrained flesh, and broken nails.
"Oh," she said, "how cruel! Whatever have you been doing?"
Brooke glanced at his fingers reflectively. "On the contrary, I suppose I ought to feel proud of them, though I scarcely think I am. Building flumes and dams, though that will hardly convey any very clear impression to you. It implies swinging the axe and shovel most of every day, and working up to the waist in water occasionally."
"But you were always so particular in England."