After it was over, Gault walked home with her. That rare day had been succeeded by a still rarer night. Low in the southerly sky hung a great round moon. Measured by the standards of southerly latitudes, the moon behaves very eccentrically up there. After describing a short arc across the southern sky, she would go down in an hour or so not far from where she had risen. In the meantime she held the world in a breathless spell of beauty. In that magical light the rude buildings of the Post created a picture of old romance. There was a silvery bloom upon the grass; and the velvety black shadows suggested unutterable meanings that caught at the heart. The shadow of Gault’s house reached almost to Loseis’ door.
They paused there; and Loseis looked around her with a tight breast. (Is he somewhere under this moon thinking of me?) “This is the night of the whole year!” she said.
“Well, we are free, white, and twenty-one,” said Gault. “Why go to bed? . . . The best place to see moonlight is on the river. Come out in a canoe with me for an hour.”
Loseis’ intuition warned her not to go—but one does not always listen to one’s intuitions. She was tempted. He can’t do any more than talk, she thought; I guess I can stand it. I shall be looking at the moonlight, and thinking of the other one. “Very well,” she said.
“Go in and get a coat,” he said. “I’ll come back for you in two minutes.”
He hastened back to his own kitchen. One of his Crees was sent down to the creek mouth to find a canoe. Of the others, one played a banjo and all could sing the old-fashioned songs that are still current in the far North. These were stationed on a bench outside the kitchen door with orders to sing, not loud. After all there was something magnificent about Gault. In his dark way he had imagination. But he was fifty-three years old!
When they got down to the water’s edge the Cree was holding the canoe for them to step into. By Gault’s orders he had chosen not one of the usual bark canoes of the Slavis which are little more than paper boats, but a dug-out of which there were several lying in the creek. These heavier and roomier craft are however, no more stable than the others. Loseis perceived that a nest of blankets and pillows had been arranged for her in the bottom.
“Oh, I like to paddle,” she said.
“Give me the pleasure of looking at you in the moonlight,” murmured Gault.
Again Loseis felt strong compunctions; but it seemed too ridiculous to back out then; especially with the Indian looking on. She got in; and Gault, taking his place in the stern, paddled out into the main stream.