Her face clouded for a moment as her eyes rested upon his.

“Your civilization is coming north to spoil it all,” she added, and turned to the rock table.

Philip dropped his load.

“Supper is ready,” she said, and the cloud had passed.

It was Jeanne’s first reference to his own people, to the invasion of civilization into the north, and there recurred to Philip the words in which she had cried out her hatred against Churchill.  But Jeanne did not betray herself again.  She was quiet while they were eating, and Philip saw that she was very tired.  When they had finished, they sat for a few minutes watching the lowering flames of the fire.  Darkness had gathered about them.  Their faces and the rock were illumined more and more faintly as the embers died down.  A silence fell upon them.  In the banskians close behind them an owl hooted softly, a cautious, drumming note, as though the night-bird possessed still a fear of the newly dead day.  The brush gave out sound—­voices infinitesimally small, strange quiverings, rustlings that might have been made by wind, by breath, by shadows, almost.  Overhead the tips of the spruce and tall pines whispered among themselves, as they never commune by day.  Spirits seemed to move among them, sending down to Jeanne’s and Philip’s listening ears a restful, sleepy murmur.  Farther back there sounded a deep sniff, where a moose, traveling the well-worn trail, stopped in sudden fear and wonder at the strange man-scent which came to its nostrils.  And still farther, from some little lake nameless and undiscovered in the black depths of the forest to the south, a great northern loon sent out its cowardly cry of defiance to all night things, and then plunged deep under water, as though frightened into the depths by its own mad jargon.  The fire died lower.  Philip moved a little nearer to the girl, whose breathing he could hear.

“Jeanne,” he said, softly, fighting to keep himself from touching her hand, “I know what you mean—­I understand.  Two years ago I gave up civilization for this.  I am glad that I wrote to you as I did, for now you will believe me and know that I understand.  I love this world up here as you love it.  I am never going back again.”

Jeanne was silent.

“But there is one thing, at least one—­which I cannot understand in you,” he went on, nerving himself for what might come a moment later.  “You are of this world—­you hate civilization—­and yet you have brought a man into the north to teach you its ways.  I mean this man who you say is the most wonderful man in the world.”

He waited, trembling.  It seemed an eternity before Jeanne answered.  And then she said: 

“He is my father, M’sieur Philip.”

Philip could not speak.  Darkness hid him from Jeanne.  She did not see that which leaped into his face, and that for a moment he was on the point of flinging himself at her feet.

“You spoke of yourself, of Pierre, of your father, and of one other at Fort o’ God,” said Philip.  “I thought that he—­the other —­was your tutor.”