He thrust open the door of his cabin, eager to enlist Gregson in his enthusiasm.  The artist was not in.  Philip noticed that the cartridge-belt and the revolver which usually hung over Gregson’s bunk were gone.  He never entered the cabin without looking at the sketch of Eileen Brokaw.  Something about it seemed to fascinate him, to challenge his presence.  Now it was missing from the wall.

He threw off his coat and hat, filled his pipe, and began gathering up his few possessions, ready for packing.  It was noon before he was through, and Gregson had not returned.  He boiled himself some coffee and sat down to wait.  At five o’clock he was to eat supper with the Brokaws and the factor; Eileen, through her father, had asked him to join her an hour or two earlier in the big room.  He waited until four, and then left a brief note for Gregson upon the table.

It was growing dusk in the forest.  From the top of the ridge Philip caught the last red glow of the sun, sinking far to the south and west.  A faint radiance of it still swept over his head and mingled with the thickening gray gloom of the northern sea.  Across the dip in the Bay the huge, white-capped cliff seemed to loom nearer and more gigantic in the whimsical light.  For a few moments a red bar shot across it, and as the golden fire faded and died away Philip could not but think it was like a torch beckoning to him.  A few hours more, and where that light had been he would see Jeanne.  And now, down there, Eileen was waiting for him.

His pulse quickened as he passed beyond the ancient fort, over the burial-place of the dead, and into Churchill.  He met no one at the factor’s, and the door leading into Miss Brokaw’s room was partly ajar.  A great fire was burning in the fireplace, and he saw Eileen seated in the rich glow of it, smiling at him as he entered.  He closed the door, and when he turned she had risen and was holding out her hands to him.  She had dressed for him, almost as on that night of the Brokaw ball.  In the flashing play of the fire her exquisite arms and shoulders shone with dazzling beauty; her eyes laughed at him; her hair rippled in a golden flood.  Faintly there came to him, filling the room slowly, tingling his nerves, the sweet scent of heliotrope—­the perfume that had filled his nostrils on that other night, a long time ago, the sweet scent that had come to him in the handkerchief dropped on the rock, the breath of the bit of lace that had bound Jeanne’s hair!

Eileen moved toward him.  “Philip,” she said, “now are you glad to see me?”

IX

Her voice broke the spell that had held him for a moment.

“I am glad to see you,” he cried, quickly, seizing both her hands.  “Only I haven’t quite yet awakened from my dream.  It seems too wonderful, almost unreal.  Are you the old Eileen who used to shudder when I told you of a bit of jungle and wild beasts, and who laughed at me because I loved to sleep out-of-doors and tramp mountains, instead of decently behaving myself at home?  I demand an explanation.  It must be a wonderful change—­”