In the man, too, was a change. There was something looking out of his eyes which seemed to have banished his last thought of that lifelong desire for the success of his labors, something which left him no room for anything else, something which had for its inception all the human passionate desire of his tremendous soul. His gray eyes glowed with a living fire; they deepened; a flush of hot blood surged over his rugged features, lighting them out of their plainness. His temples throbbed visibly, and the vast sinews shivered with the fire that swept through his body.
In a daze Betty understood the change. Her heart leaped out to him, yielding all her love, all that was hers to give. It cried aloud her joy in the passion of those moments, but her lips were silent. She had gazed into heaven for one brief instant, then her eyes dropped before a vision she dared no longer to look upon.
"Betty!"
The man had lifted to his elbow again. A torrent of passionate words rushed to his lips. But they remained unspoken. His heavy tongue was incapable of giving them expression. He halted. That one feverish exclamation was all that came, for his tongue clave in his mouth. But in that one word was the avowal of such a love as rarely falls to the lot of woman. It was the man's whole being that spoke.
Betty's hand twisted from his grasp. She sprang to her feet and turned to the door.
"It's Bob Mason," she said, in a voice that was almost an awed whisper, as she rushed to the cook-stove.
The camp-boss strode heavily into the room. There was a light in his eyes that usually would have gladdened the master of the mills. Now, however, Dave's thoughts were far from the matters of the camp.
"We've travoyed a hundred to the river bank!" the lumberman exclaimed in a tone of triumph. "The work's begun!"
It was Betty who answered him. Hers was the ready sympathy, the heart to understand for others equally with herself. She turned with a smile of welcome, of pride in his pride.
"Bob, you're a gem!" she cried, holding out a hand of kindliness to him.