The Churchill narrowed and its current became swifter as they progressed.  Five portages were made between sunrise and eleven o’clock.  They ate dinner at the fifth, and rested for two hours.  Then the journey was resumed.  It was three o’clock when Jeanne dropped her paddle and turned to Philip.  There were deep lines in his face.  He smiled, but there was more of haggard misery than cheer in the smile.  There was an unnatural flush in his cheeks, and he began to feel a burning pain where the blow had fallen upon his head before.  For a full half-minute Jeanne looked at him without speaking.  “Philip,” she said—­and it was the first time she had spoken his name in this way, “I insist upon going ashore immediately.  If you do not land—­now—­in that opening ahead, I shall jump out, and you can go on alone.”

“As you say—­my Captain Jeanne,” surrendered Philip, a little dizzily.

Jeanne guided the canoe to the shore, and was the first to spring out, while Philip steadied the light craft with his paddle.  She pointed to the luggage.

“We will want the tent—­everything,” she said, “because we are going to camp here until to-morrow.”

Once on shore, Philip’s dizziness left him.  He pulled the canoe high up on the bank, and then Jeanne and he set off, side by side, to explore the high, wooded ground back from the river.  They followed a well-worn moose trail, and two or three hundred yards from the stream came upon a small opening cluttered by great rocks and surrounded by clumps of birch, spruce, and banskian pine.  The moose trail crossed this rough open space; and, following it to the opposite side, Philip and Jeanne came upon a clear, rippling little stream, scarcely two yards in width, hidden in places under thick caribou moss and jungles of seedling pines.  It was an ideal camping spot, and Jeanne gave a little cry of delight when they found the cold water of the creek.

Philip then returned to the river, concealed the canoe, covered up all traces of their landing, and began to carry the camping outfit back to the open.  The small silk tent for Jeanne’s use he set up in a little grassy corner of the clearing, and built their fire a dozen paces from it.  With a sort of thrilling pleasure he began cutting balsam boughs for Jeanne’s bed.  He cut armful after armful, and it was growing dusk in the forest by the time he was done.  In the glow and the heat of the fire Jeanne’s cheeks were as pink as an apple.  She had turned a big flat rock into a table, and as she busied herself about this she burst suddenly into a soft ripple of song; then, remembering that it was not Pierre who was near her, she stopped.  Philip, with his last armful of bedding, was directly behind her, and he laughed happily at her over the green mass of balsam when she turned and saw him looking at her.

“You like this?” he asked.

“It is glorious!” cried Jeanne, her eyes flashing.  She seemed to grow taller before him, and stood with her head thrown back, lips parted, gazing upon the wilderness about her.  “It is glorious!” she repeated, breathing deeply.  “There is nothing in the whole world that could make me give this up, M’sieur Philip.  I was born in it.  I want to die in it.  Only—­”