"Someday I want to tell Yellow Bird how much I love her."
Now in these hours since he and his master had come to the Burntwood it seemed to Peter that he had lost something very great, for in his happiness McKay had taken but scant notice of him, and Nada seemed to have found a greater joy than that which a long time ago she had found in his comradeship. So now, as she saw him lying in his loneliness a short distance away, Nada suddenly ran to him, and together they went into the thick screen of the balsams, Peter yipping joyously, and Nada without so much as turning her head in the direction of Roger and Father John. But even in that bird-like swiftness with which she had left them, Father John had caught the look in her eyes.
"I have made a mistake," he confessed humbly. "I have sinned, because in her I have roused the temptation to urge you to fly away with her—down there—south. She is a woman, and being a woman she has infinite faith in Yellow Bird, for Yellow Bird helped to give you to her. She believes—"
"And I—I—also believe," said McKay, staring at the green balsams.
"And yet—it is better for you to remain. God means that judgment and happiness should come in their turn."
Jolly Roger rose to his feet, facing the south.
"It is a temptation, father. It would be hard to give her up—now. If Breault would only wait a little while. But if he comes—now—"
He walked away slowly, following through the balsams where Nada and Peter had gone. Father John watched him go, and a trembling smile came to his lips when he was alone. In his heart he knew he was a coward, and that these young people had been stronger than he. For in their happiness and the faith which he had falsely built up in them they had resigned themselves to the inevitable, while he, in these moments of cowardice, had shown them the way to temptation. And yet as he stood there, looking in the direction they had gone, he felt no remorse because of what he had done, and a weight seemed to have lifted itself from his shoulders.
For a time the more selfish instincts of the man rose in him, fighting down the sacrificial humility of the great faith of which he was a messenger. The new sensation thrilled him, and in its thrill he felt his heart beating a little faster, and hope rising in him. Five years were a long time—for him. That was the thought which kept repeating itself over and over in his brain, and with it came that other thought, that self-preservation was the first law of existence, and therefore could not be a sin. Thus did Father John turn traitor to his spoken words, though his calm and smiling face gave no betrayal of it when Nada and Roger returned to the cabin an hour later, their arms filled with red bakneesh vines and early wildflowers.
Nada's cheeks were as pink as the bakneesh, and her eyes as blue as the rock-violets she wore on her breast.