And the Irishwoman cried: “Frances! For shame!”
But the other was very much composed.
“I am right, all the same,—what woman of modesty would follow a man to the wilderness, confessing brazenly her love? You haven't noticed any hysterics on my part over it,—nor will you. I think it all a very open scandal.”
The little woman was flying into a rage of tumbled words and hopeless brogue, but Maren Le Moyne, the blood red to her temples, rose silently, took the pot of broth, and walked away, and never in her life did she hold herself so tall and straight.
As she knelt beside the blanket bed of McElroy, and lifted his helpless head, her eyes were burning sombrely.
“This, too?” she was saying dumbly, within herself. “Is this, too, part of the lesson of life?”
And all through the days that followed, long warm days, with the songs of birds from the gliding shores, the ripple of waters beneath the prow of a canoe, she sat beside the unconscious man and looked at him with dumb yearning.
For love of him,—what would she not have done, what would she not do still for love of him,—he who had sold her for a kiss; and for it there came something,—she could not define it,—something that seemed to live in the atmosphere, to taint the glory of the sunshine, to speak under every word and whisper.
Never again did she cook at the fire with the others, but had her own on the outskirts, and Sheila O'Halloran came and cooked with her, talked and comforted and hovered about Anders McElroy where he lay in a silence like death, his fair face flushed with fever and his strong hands plucking at everything within their reach.
“Don't ye worry, dear, he'll not die. 'Twouldn't be accordin' to th' rights av life,—not afther all ye've done f'r him. He'll opin his blessid eyes some day an' know ye, an' Heaven itself will not be like thim f'r glory.”