"You were glad that I pummeled the stranger, then?"
Mélisse did not answer, but he caught a laughing sparkle in the corner of her eye as she left him.
"Come home, Jan Thoreau," he hummed softly, as he went to the store. "Come home, come home, come home, for the little Mélisse has grown into a woman, and is learning to use her eyes!"
Among the first of the trappers to come in with his furs was MacVeigh.
He brought word that Jan had gone south, to spend the annual holiday at
Nelson House, and Cummings told Mélisse whence the message came. He did
not observe the slight change that came into her face, and went on:
"I don't understand this in Jan. He is needed here for the carnival.
Did you know that he was going to Nelson House?"
Mélisse shook her head.
"MacVeigh says they have made him an offer to go down there as chief man," continued the factor. "It is strange that he has sent no explanation to me!"
It was a week after the big caribou roast before Jan returned to Lac Bain. Mélisse saw him drive in from the Churchill trail; but while her heart fluttered excitedly, she steeled herself to meet him with at least an equal show of the calm indifference with which he had left her six weeks before. The coolness of his leave-taking still rankled bitterly in her bosom. He had not kissed her; he had not even passed his last evening with her.
But she was not prepared for the changed Jan Thoreau who came slowly through the cabin door. His hair and beard had grown, covering the smooth cheeks which he had always kept closely shaven. His eyes glowed with dull pleasure as she stood waiting for him, but there was none of the old flash and fire in them. There was a strangeness in his manner, an uneasiness in the shifting of his eyes, which caused the half-defiant flush to fade slowly from her cheeks before either had spoken. She had never known this Jan before, and her fortitude left her as she approached him, wonderingly, silent, her hands reaching out to him.
"Jan!" she said.