"Is that all?" she said happily. "Is that all?"
"You don't understand, dear, how serious it is," he said, "I couldn't ask you to marry a sick man."
"But you love me?" she said, "You want me—you have been miserable trying to give me up."
"It has been a bitter fight," he said, "a miserable, lonesome fight."
Pearl stood up suddenly, and he thought he had never seen her so beautiful, so queenly or so compelling. He knew he was going to do whatever she said. The weight of responsibility seemed to be lifted.
"Come out," she said quickly, "we are too happy to stay inside. I must breathe the sunshine and look up at the sky. My heart is too full for a house."
They drove to the river bank, a mile away, and sat on a fallen log at the head of a ravine, which fell sharply to the river below. Through the opening in the trees, they would see the slow running Souris, on which the sunshine glinted, making its easy way to join its elder brother, the Assiniboine, on the long, long march to the sea. Across the river plumy willows, pale green and tremulous, grew paler still as a wind passed over them.
The afternoon sun was sinking in a sea of wine-red mist, throwing streamers of light into the upper sky, like a giant's fan.
"I know now," said Pearl, "why I was led to Purple Springs, and why I felt when I met Annie Gray that my life would be knit with hers;" and then as they sat, hand-in-hand, with the glory of the sunset transfiguring the every-day world, she told him of the wonder valley of hot springs in the far North, whose streams have magical powers of healing. The valley of Purple Springs—away beyond the sunset.
"We'll go over tomorrow," said Pearl, "and Annie will tell you all about it, with its arch of mountains, its tropical flowers, the size of the vegetables and grains which grow there, and the delight of the Indians when they find their sick people growing well again. Annie has been longing to go, and I told her yesterday I would go with her, and we can still get there before the cold weather."