For a long while, now—almost from the very beginning—he had known that he was in love with this girl; but, after that one day in the garden, he also knew that there was scarcely the remotest chance that he should live to tell her so again, or that she could survive to hear him.
For when they had entered the enemy's zone below Mount Terrible they both realised that there was almost no chance of their returning.
He had lighted his pipe; and now he sat working away at his drawings, making a map of his route as best he could without instruments, and noting with rapid pencil all matters of interest for those upon whose orders he and this girl beside him had penetrated the forbidden forest of Les Errues. This for the slim chance of getting back alive. But he had long believed that, if his pigeons failed him at the crisis, no report would ever be delivered to those who sent him here, either concerning his discoveries or his fate and the fate of the girl who lay asleep beside him.
An hour later she awoke. He was still bent over his map, and she presently extended one arm and let her hand rest on his knee.
"Do you feel better, Yellow-hair?"
"Yes. Thank you for removing my shoes."
"I suppose you are hungry," he remarked.
"Yes. Are you?"
He smiled: "As usual. I wish to heaven I could run across a roebuck." They both craved something to satisfy the hunger made keen by the Alpine air, and which no concentrated rations could satisfy. McKay seldom ventured to kill any game—merely an auerhahn, a hare or two, a red squirrel—and sometimes he had caught trout in the mountain brooks with his bare hands—the method called "tickling" and only too familiar to Old-World poachers.
"Roebuck," she repeated trying not to speak wistfully.