"You may go with me, if you can run. I leave the day after to-morrow."
"Thanks," said Dixon, moving toward the door.
Mélisse did not lift her head as he went out. Faintly she said:
"I've kept your dinner for you, Jan. Why didn't you come sooner?"
"I had dinner with Gravois," he replied. "Jean said that you would hardly be prepared for five, Mélisse, so I accepted his invitation."
He took down from the wall a fur sledge-coat, in which Mélisse had mended a rent a day or two before, and, throwing it over his arm, turned to leave.
"Jan!"
He faced her slowly, knowing that in spite of himself there was a strangeness in his manner which she would not understand.
"Why are you going away the day after to-morrow—two weeks before the others? You didn't tell me."
"I'm going a hundred miles into the South," he answered.