Before this night he never realized how beautiful the wilderness was, how complete it could be.  It had offered him visions of new life, but these visions had never quite shut out the memories of old pain.  He watched and listened.  The water rippled behind his canoe; it trickled in a soothing cadence after each dip of his paddle; he heard the gentle murmur of it among the reeds and grasses, and now and then the gurgling laughter of it, like the faintest tinkling of dainty bells.  He had never understood it before; he had never joined in its happiness.  The night sounds came to him with a different meaning, filled him with different sensations.  As he slipped quietly around a bend in the river he heard a splashing ahead of him, and knew that a moose was feeding, belly-deep, in the water.  At other times the sound would have set his fingers itching for a rifle, but now it was a part of the music of the night.  Later he heard the crashing of a heavy body along the shore and in the distance the lonely howl of a wolf.  He listened to the sounds with a quiet pleasure instead of creeping thrills which they once sent through him.  Every sound spoke of Jeanne—­of Jeanne and her world, into which each stroke of his paddle carried them a little deeper.

And yet the truth could not but come to him that Jeanne was but a stranger.  She was a creature of mystery, as she lay there asleep in the bow of the canoe; he loved her, and yet he did not know her.  He confessed to himself, as the night lengthened, that he would be glad when morning came.  Jeanne would clear up a half of his perplexities then, perhaps all of them.  He would at least learn more about herself and the reason for the attack at Fort Churchill.

He paddled for another hour, and then looked at his watch by the light of a match.  It was three o’clock.

Jeanne had not moved, but as the match burned out between his fingers she startled him by speaking.

“Is it nearly morning, M’sieur?”

“An hour until dawn,” said Philip.  “You have been sleeping a long time—­” Her name was on his lips, but he found it a little more difficult to speak now.  And yet there was a gentleness in Jeanne’s “M’sieur” which encouraged him.  “Are you getting hungry?” he asked.

“Pierre and my father always ask me that when they are starving,” replied Jeanne, sitting erect in her nest so that Philip saw her face and the shimmer of her hair.  “There is everything to eat in the pack, M’sieur Philip, even to a bottle of olives.”

“Good!” cried Philip, delighted, “But won’t you please cut out that ‘m’sieur?’ My greatest weakness is a desire to be called by my first name.  Will you?”

“If it pleases you,” said Jeanne.  “There is everything there to eat, and I will make you a cup of coffee, M’sieur—­”

“What?”

“Philip.”

There was a ripple of laughter in the girl’s voice.  Philip fairly trembled.