"I don't care! It is good for you. No, don't come one step with me. Not one step. Go on with your work. I'm going to fly."
She ran lightly across the chips, at a safe distance from Jean's outstretched arms, and turned into the trail among the maples. There she paused, gave her lover one melting, caressing, but still half-mocking glance, and cried to him:
"I am making a flag for 'Mon Rêve,' and it's not nearly done yet, Jean."
Then she disappeared among the bright branches.
With a tumult in his heart Jean turned back to his ladder and paint-pot. Little twinges of angry disappointment ran along his nerves, only to be smothered straightway in a flood of passionate tenderness.
"Next voyage, anyway!" he muttered to himself as he worked feverishly. "I couldn't live longer than that without her!" And he went over and over in his imagination every detail of the girl's appearance, the changing moods of her radiant dark face, her hair, her hands, the tones of her voice.
Along the trail through the autumn maples, meanwhile Mademoiselle Barbe was speeding on light feet. The little smile was gone from the corners of her mouth, and into her eyes, now that Jean could no longer see them, was come a great gentleness. Her mockery, her impatience, her picturesque asperity were a kind of game which she played with herself, to disguise, sometimes even from herself, the greatness and the oversensitiveness of her heart. At this moment she was feeling sore at the nearness of Jean's departure, and was conscious of the pressure of his will urging her to go with him. This she was resolved she would not do; but she was equally resolved that her flag should be ready and go in her place. As for the next voyage—well, she thought to herself that Jean might persuade her by that time, if he tried hard. As to his success she had not really a grain of doubt. She knew well enough the quality of his fibre. Her light feet, as she hurried, made hardly a sound upon the soft mould of the trail, which was half-hidden by the bright autumn carpeting of the leaves. But presently she heard the noise of heavier footfalls approaching. Just ahead of her the trail turned sharply. Peering through the tangle of branches and thinned leafage, she caught glimpses of something that caused her face to grow pale, her heart to throb up into her throat; and she stepped behind the thick shelter of a fir bush to consider what was to be done.
The sight that so disturbed her was in itself no terrible one. A tall, ruddy-faced, keen-eyed man, carelessly dressed, but of erect, military bearing, came striding up the trail, a gun over his arm, a brown dog at his heels. Barbe recognized him at once—the English officer in command of the fort at Annapolis. She saw that he was out for partridges—but she saw, also, that he was walking at a pace that would speedily devour the scant two miles that divided him from the shipyard of "Mon Rêve." It was evident that he had forgotten his shooting in his interest in this unknown trail upon which he had stumbled. If he went on the game was up for Jean's little ship!
She resolved that he should not go on. It took her just five seconds to decide the whole question. There was a large fallen tree close beside the trail, two or three paces from where she hid. Over this she threw herself discreetly, with a little choking scream, and lay moaning among the leaves beside it.
The Englishman darted forward and was at her side in a moment, bending over her with a mingling of alarm and admiration in his gray eyes.