For two or three days Caius lent a hand at killing and skinning the gentle-eyed animals. It was not that he did not feel some disgust at the work; but it meant bread to the men he was with, and he might as well help them. It was an experience, and, above all, it was distraction. When the women had seen him at work they welcomed him with demonstrative joy to the hot meals which they prepared twice a day for the hunters. Caius was not quite sure what composed the soups and stews of which he partook, but they tasted good enough.
When he had had enough of the seal-hunt it took him all the next day to cleanse the clothes he had worn from the smell of the fat, and he felt himself to be effeminate in the fastidiousness that made him do it.
During all these days the houses and roads of the island were almost completely deserted, except that Caius supposed that, after the first holiday, the maids who lived with Madame Le Maître were kept to their usual household tasks, and that their mistress worked with them.
At last, one day when Caius was coming from a house on one of the hills which he had visited because there was in it a little mortal very new to this world, he saw Madame Le Maître riding up the snowy road that he was descending. He felt glad, at the first sight of her, that he was no longer a youth but had fully come to man's estate, and had attained to that command of nerve and conquest over a beating heart that is the normal heritage of manhood. This thought came to him because he was so vividly reminded of the hour in which he had once before sought an interview with this lady—even holding her hand in his—and of his ignominious repulse. In spite of the sadness of his heart, a smile crossed his face, but it was gone before he met her. He had quite given up wondering now about that seafaring episode, and accepted it only as a fact. It did not matter to him why or how she had played her part; it was enough that she had done it, and all that she did was right in his eyes.
The lady's horse was walking slowly up the heavy hill; the reins she hardly held, letting them loose upon its neck. It was evident that with her there was no difference since the time she had last seen Caius; it appeared that she did not even purpose stopping her horse. Caius stopped it gently, laying his hand upon its neck.
"What is it?" she asked, with evident curiosity, for the face that he turned to her made her aware that there was something new in her quiet life.
It was not easy to find his words; he did not care much to do so quickly. "I could not go on," he said, "without letting you know——" He stopped.
She did not answer him with any quick impatient question. She looked at the snowy hill in front of her. "Well?" she said.
"The other day, you know," he said, "I rode by the back of your poultry farm, and—I saw you when you were feeding the birds."
"Yes?" she said; she was still looking gravely enough at the snow. The communication so far did not affect her much.