She nodded with a radiant smile, the bushes closed behind her flowing hair as a last bright note of farewell floated back to the stagnant swamp pools. Then her happy steps turned lightly in the direction of the dismal death tree, where she was to meet the one to whom she had dedicated her fresh young heart.
Quickly she came across him, stretched at his ease in the soft green shade beneath the tinted light. She came to him, full of that love and trust which is in itself a thing of perfect beauty, yet which so often proves a serpent to its owner. She knelt by his side, under the interlacing tangle of boughs, to throw her warm young arms around his neck in the passion of her innocent devotion. Her tantalising hair waved round his neck and fondled each feature. It intoxicated the sense, so he returned her embrace, drew her down beside him, whispering soft words into her ear, caressing the flushed face with the careless touch of a man who understands a woman's weakness.
Jealousy had awakened the love flame in his heart. Now the opposer had been destroyed, and no further obstacle stood in his path. Menotah was for him. He had but to put forth his hand and receive a bride—surely she was worth the taking. What mattered the stiff body drifting down an unknown reach of the Saskatchewan? That could no more interfere between him and desire. For the time he was sincere. This warmth at the heart was love; the beautiful being then caressing him with soft fingers had been the kindling of it.
Nor had she any great consideration for the dead Muskwah. He himself had explained the truth, when he said that none could think of the moon while the sun gave light. She breathed within a golden flood of ecstasy, in which time and season were empty phrases. The warmth and beauty of that summer day had been created for her alone, while she, in her turn, had been brought to the world that she might bring joy and satisfaction to another. Had not the heart been free from sorrow all the days of life? And now the happiness had been idealised. How magnificent, how wonderfully coloured, how fantastic and exquisitely enervating was this supreme intensity of heart joy!
She murmured to him softly, 'You have given me love. I know what it is now. And the more you give me, more I shall ask for.'
'You shall have it, chérie!'
'It is my life now. I should die if I looked for it—and it never came.'
He turned her face up inquiringly and gazed into it.
'Ah! You do not understand that. But, if I thought you had ceased to love me, it would kill me. You may not live without a heart. We are given but one, and we cannot part with our best more than once.'
'But when it is returned to you?'