We reached the camp, deafened by Pierre’s bellow of greeting.  The woman had kept pace with us, and stood waiting for us to disembark.  She was breathing quickly and the blood was in her brown cheeks; her great eyes were frankly opened and shining.  I pushed by the men and bent to kiss her hand.

“Madame, thank you for my welcome home.”

She bowed, and I caught the perfume of a rose on her breast.  “Monsieur, we are all rejoiced to see you safe.”  Her tone took, half-whimsically, the note of court and compliment.  The fingers that I still held were berry stained.  She showed them to me with a laugh and a light word, and so made excuse to draw them away.  Her hair had grown long enough to blow into her eyes, and she smoothed a soft loose wave of it as she questioned me about my voyage.

I was new to the wonder of seeing her there, so answered her stupidly.  For all my day-dreams of the week that I had been away I was not prepared for her.  And indeed she had altered.  The strain of fear and incessant watchfulness was removed, and with the lessening of that tension had come a pliancy of look and gesture, a richness of tone that found me unprepared.  I made but a poor figure.  It was as well that work clamored at me, and that I had to turn away and direct the men.

We ate our supper at the time of the last daylight, and the whippoorwills were calling and the water singing in the reeds.  It was a silent meal, but I sat beside the woman, and when it was over I drew her with me to the shore.  It was very still.  Fireflies danced in the grasses, and the stars pricked out mistily through a gauze of cloud.  I wrapped the woman in her fur coat, and bade her sit, while I stretched myself at her feet.  Then I turned to her.

“Madame, have you questions for me that you did not wish the men to hear?”

She sat very quietly, but I knew that her hand, which was within touch of mine, grew suddenly rigid.

“Monsieur, you heard nothing of Lord Starling?”

I touched her hand lightly.  “Nothing, madame.  I have no news.”

“Then matters stand just as they did a week ago?”

I hesitated.  “As concerns Lord Starling, yes.  As concerns ourselves——­ Madame, I carry a lighter heart than I did.  All this week I have feared that you were fretting at the loneliness and the rough surroundings.  But I find you serene and the surface of life smooth.  It is a gallant spirit that you bring to this situation.  I thank you, madame.”

She did not speak for a moment, so that I wondered if I had vexed her.  I looked up straight into her great eyes that were full on me, and there was something disquietingly alight in her glance, a flicker of that lightning that had played between us on the day of the storm.

“Monsieur!” she cried, with a little sobbing laugh.  “I beg you never to thank me—­for anything.  The stream of gratitude must always run from me to you.  I have not been serene because of any will of mine.  It has been instinctive.  I can sometimes carry out a fixed purpose, but I do it stiffly, inflexibly, not as you do, with a laugh and a shrug, monsieur.  No, no!  My serenity has not been calculated.  I have been—­I have been almost happy.  It is strange, but it is true.”