For a moment he held himself in restraint. The words were simple enough, but he knew what they meant. And this country girl, whom he had learned to like on her father's farm, had grown larger and larger in his scheme of things with the passing weeks. At first he had tried to dissuade himself, to think of it only as a passing fancy, and to remember that he was engaged in the serious business of earning enough money to build a shack on a homestead, and buy a team and a plough, and a cow and some bits of furniture. It would be a plain, simple life, but Beulah was accustomed—What had Beulah to do with it? He scolded himself for permitting her intrusion, and turned his mind to the mellow fields where he would follow the plough until the sun dipped into the Rockies, And then he would turn the horses loose for food and rest, and in the shack the jack-pine knots would be frying in the kitchen stove, and the little table would be set, and Beulah—
And now this girl had come to him, while he was under the shadow, and because the shadow would not let him speak, and because her soul would not be bound by custom, and because her love could not be concealed, she had let him know.
"Have you thought it over, Beulah?" he said. "I have no right, as matters stand, to give or take a promise. I have no right—"
"You have no right to say 'as matters stand' as though matters had anything to do with it. They haven't Jim. No, I have not thought it over. This isn't something you think. It is something that comes to you when you don't think, or in spite of your thinking. But it's real—more real than anything you can touch or handle—more real than these bars, which are not so close as you seem to fancy—"
And then, between the iron rods across the open window, his lips met hers.
…"And you were seeking life, Beulah," he said at last. "Life that you should live in your own way, for the joy of living it. And—"
"And I have found it," she answered, in a voice low and thrilling with tenderness. "I have found it in you. We shall work out our destiny together, but we must keep our thought on the destiny, rather than the work. Oh, Jim, I'm just dying to see your homestead—our homestead. And are there two windows? We must have two windows, Jim—one in the east for the sun, and one in the west for the mountains."
"Our house is all window, as yet," he answered gaily. "And there isn't as much as a fence post to break the view."
"What are you doing here?" said a sharp voice, and Beulah felt as though her tin box were suddenly sinking into a great abyss. She turned with a little gasp. Sergeant Grey stood within arm's length of her.
"Oh, it's Sergeant Grey," she said, with a tone of relief. "I am Beulah Harris. And I've just been getting myself engaged to your prisoner here. Oh, it's not so awful as you think. You see, we knew each other in Manitoba, and we've really been engaged for quite a while, but he didn't know it until to-night."