“But there are Indians on the war-path now.”
“They will be in camp or drunk at the post. Your Sioux has left this part of the island. He may come back by morning, but he would not camp away from so much plunder. Sioux cannot be unlike our Chippewas. Do you think,” demanded Marianson, “that you will be quite, quite safe in the cave?”
Her companion laughed.
“If I find the cave unsafe I can leave it; but you in the dark alone—you must let me go with you.”
“No; the risk is too great. It is better for me to go alone. I know every rock, every bend of the shore. The pull back around the island will be hardest, if there is not enough wind.”
“I go with you,” decided the boy.
“But you gave me your promise to do exactly as I bade you. I am older than you,” said Marianson. “I know what is best, and that is that you remain here until I come. Swear to me that you will.”
He was silent, beseeching her with his eyes to relent. Then, owning her right to dominate, he pledged her by the name of his saint to do as she required.
Their forced companionship, begun at daylight, was ending as darkness crept through the cavern's mouth. They waited, and those last moments of silence, while they leaned to look closely at each other with the night growing between them, were a benediction on the day.
Marianson stooped to creep through the cavern's mouth, but once more she turned and looked at him, and it was she herself who stretched appealing arms. The boy's shyness and the woman's aversion to men vanished as in fire. They stood together in the hollow of the cave in one long embrace. He sought her mouth and kissed her, and, suffocating with joy, she escaped through the low door.