THE DEVOTION OF A GREAT WOMAN
The daylight was lengthening. Very slowly the lolling sun was returning to life and power. A sense of revivifying was in the air. As yet the grip of winter still held. The snow was still spread to the depth of many feet upon the broad expanse of the valley of the Sleepers. But its perfect hue was smirched with the lateness of the season. It had assumed that pearly grey which denotes the coming of the great thaw.
Marcel was standing on the drifted bank of the little river, winding its way towards the Northern hills. He was there for the purpose of ascertaining the conditions prevailing. But his purpose had been forgotten.
Erect, motionless, superb in his physical greatness, he was gazing out at the wall of western hills, heedless of that which he looked upon. He was absorbed in thought that was reaching out far, far beyond the hills which barred his vision. It was somewhere out there where the eyeless sockets of an old moose looked down upon the great river coming up out of the south, cutting its way between the granite walls of the earth's foundations.
Keeko! He was thinking, dreaming of the girl who had come to him in the heart of the far-off woods, with all her woman's appeal to his youthful manhood. He was thinking of her wonderful blue eyes, her radiant smile, her amazing courage. They were the same thoughts which had lightened even the darkest moments of the howling storms of winter and transformed the deadly monotony of it all into something more than an endurance to which the life of the Northern world condemned him.
But there was more than all this stirring him now. He was moved to impatience, the impatience of headstrong youth. It was not new. He had had to battle against it from the moment of his return to the fort. More than all else in the world he desired to fling every caution, every responsibility to the winds, and set out for the meeting-place over which the old moose stood guard.
He knew it could not be. He knew it would be an act of the basest ingratitude and selfishness. Uncle Steve had not yet returned. He could not return for weeks yet. If he, Marcel, yielded to his desires An-ina must be left alone. His impatience was useless. He knew that. The Sleepers would awaken soon, and demand their trade. He could not fling the burden of it all on the willing shoulders of An-ina. He must wait. He could do no less.
He turned away. It was an act of renunciation. The signs on the river had told him nothing, because he had asked no question. He knew it all without asking. He had known before he had sought his excuse. So he floundered through the snow back to the fort.
The silence was profound. The world at the moment was a desert, a frigid desert. There was no life anywhere. There were not even the voices of warring dogs to greet him, and yield him excuse to vent the impatience of his mood.
He passed the gateway of the stockade where he had so often stood searching the distance in the long years. And so he approached the doorway of his home. A weight of depression clouded his handsome eyes. He was weighted with a trouble which seemed to him the greatest in the world.