"Ah, but I am careful!" he laughingly replied, "and then I have only had two from her. They both came with yours."
"I hope another will come soon," she returned, following his wistful gaze over the water.
"Oh, yes, mon ami," he cried passionately. "Eight months since we left Halifax, and only two letters."
"It is three since our first ones went over the York trail, so we are sure to receive others soon; and I know from the way Maud writes she is interested in Penetang."
"Interest is one thing and love is another," said the Doctor, dubiously. "If I felt sure that the first would develop into the second, I would praise the gods. But what is there to make it possible? A thousand miles between us! I did not think an affaire du coeur could be so serious; but now I know it. When so distant she may never care."
"You do not know the ways of a woman's heart, Doctor. She might not love you then, but she loved no other; and before another man could win her heart he would be weighed in the balance with yourself. Although absent, rest assured you are not forgotten."
"But to be remembered is not to be loved," said Beaumont again, "and a present suitor may win what an absent one has lost."
"Did it never strike you that distance itself might fan the flame of love. My mother used to say that 'absence is the furnace in which true love is tried! It tries the man but it tries the woman also.'"
"If absence has increased hers as it has mine, I shall be more than satisfied," said the Doctor.
"Something in you appealed to her, that I know," said Helen.