But Maren only looked tragically down upon him.
What would they say, those eyes that she had thought so earnest, so all-deserving in their eager honesty, if they should open to her alone?
Would they lie as they had done before, with the thought of Francette behind their blue clearness?
Ah, well,—it was all in the day's march.
This day at noon camp she came upon, close to a fallen tree, a wee red flower nodding on its slender stalk. She sighed and broke it.
“In memory of a brave man,” she said sadly. “Oh, a very brave man!”
CHAPTER XXVII RETURN
Eastward through the little lakes, across the portages where McElroy was carried by means of pole and blanket swung from sturdy shoulders, they went at hurried pace, and never a man of Maren's small command but watched the sadness of her face, that seemed to grow with the days and to feel an aching counterpart of it within his own heart.
“Take my coat for your head, Ma'amselle,” when she rested among the thwarts,—“Let me, Ma'amselle,” when she would do some little task. Thus they served her from the old desire that sight of her face had ever stirred in the breasts of men, she who had never played at the game of love, nor knew its simplest trick.