"I should go away for ever."
Jean snapped his fingers with a low laugh.
"Then remain another week, Jan Thoreau, and if it turns out as you say,
I swear I will abandon my two Iowakas and little Jean to the wolves!"
"I am going the day after to-morrow."
The next morning Iowaka complained to Mélisse that Gravois was as surly as a bear.
"A wonderful change has come over him," she said. "He does nothing but shrug his shoulders and say 'Le diable!' and 'The fool!' Last night I could hardly sleep because of his growling. I wonder what bad spirit has come into my Jean?"
Mélisse was wondering the same of Jan. She saw little of him during the day. At noon, Dixon told her that he had made up his mind not to accompany Thoreau on the trip south.
The following morning, before she was up, Jan had gone. She was deeply hurt. Never before had he left on one of his long trips without spending his last moments with her. She had purposely told her father to entertain the agent and his son at the store that evening, so that Jan might have an opportunity of bidding her good-by alone.
Outside of her thoughts of Jan, the days and evenings that followed were pleasant ones for her. The new agent was as jolly as he was fat, and took an immense liking to Mélisse. Young Dixon was good-looking and brimming with life, and spent a great deal of his time in her company. For hours at a time she listened to his stories of the wonderful world across the sea. As MacDonald had described that life to Jan at Fort Churchill, so he told of it to Mélisse, filling her with visions of great cities, painting picture after picture, until her imagination was riot with the beauty and the marvel of it all, and she listened, with flaming cheeks and glowing eyes.
One day, a week after Jan had gone, he told her about the women in the world which had come to be a fairy-land to Mélisse.