"No, M'sieur. Pierre's real sister is at Fort o' God. I am the one whom he found out on the barren."
To the night sounds there was added a heart-broken sob, and Jeanne disappeared in the tent.
XIV
Philip sat where Jeanne had left him. He was powerless to move or to say a word that might have recalled her. Her own grief, quivering in that one piteous sob, overwhelmed him. It held him mute and listening, with the hope that each instant the tent-flap might open and Jeanne reappear. And yet if she came he had no words to say. Unwittingly he had probed deep into one of those wounds that never heal, and he realized that to ask forgiveness would be but another blunder. He almost groaned as he thought of what he had done. In his desire to understand, to know more about Jeanne, he had driven her into a corner. What he had forced from her he might have learned a little later from Pierre or from the father at Fort o' God. He thought that Jeanne must despise him now, for he had taken advantage of her helplessness and his own position. He had saved her from her enemies; and in return she had opened her heart, naked and bleeding, to his eyes. What she had told him was not a voluntary confidence; it was a confession wrung from her by the rack of his questionings—the confession that she was a waif-child, that Pierre was not her brother, and that the man at Fort o' God was not her father. He had gone to the very depths of that which was sacred to herself and those whom she loved.
He rose and stirred the fire, and stray ends of birch leaped into flame, lighting his pale face. He wanted to go to the tent, kneel there where Jeanne could hear him, and tell her that it was all a mistake. Yet he knew that this could not be, neither the next day nor the next, for to plead extenuation for himself would be to reveal his love. Two or three times he had been on the point of revealing that love. Only now, after what had happened, did it occur to him that to disclose his heart to Jeanne would be the greatest crime he could commit. She was alone with him in the heart of a wilderness, dependent upon him, upon his honor. He shivered when he thought how narrow had been his escape, how short a time he had known her, and how in that brief spell he had given himself up to an almost insane hope. To him Jeanne was not a stranger. She was the embodiment, in flesh and blood, of the spirit which had been his companion for so long. He loved her more than ever now, for Jeanne the lost child of the snows was more the earthly revelation of his beloved spirit than Jeanne the sister of Pierre. But—what was he to Jeanne?
He left the fire and went to the pile of balsam which he had spread out between two rocks for his bed. He lay down and pulled Pierre's blanket over him, but his fatigue and his desire for sleep seemed to have left him, and it was a long time before slumber finally drove from him the thought of what he had done. After that he did not move. He heard none of the sounds of the night. A little owl, the devil-witch, screamed horribly overhead and awakened Jeanne, who sat up for a few moments in her balsam bed, white-faced and shivering. But Philip slept. Long afterward something warm awakened him, and he opened his eyes, thinking that it was the glow of the fire in his face. It was the sun. He heard a sound which brought him quickly into consciousness of day. It was Jeanne singing softly over beyond the rocks.
He had dreaded the coming of morning, when he would have to face Jeanne. His guilt hung heavily upon him. But the sound of her voice, low and sweet, filled with the carroling happiness of a bird, brought a glad smile to his lips. After all, Jeanne had understood him. She had forgiven him, if she had not forgotten.
For the first time he noticed the height of the sun, and he sat bolt upright. Jeanne saw his head and shoulders pop over the top of the rocks, and she laughed at him from their stone table.
"I've been keeping breakfast for over an hour, M'sieur Philip," she cried. "Hurry down to the creek and wash yourself, or I shall eat all alone!"