Suddenly he was conscious of a sound very near, and he beheld Nada, taller and slimmer and more beautiful than ever, it seemed to him, in the starlight.

“I have told him,” Father John had whispered to her only a moment before.  “I have told him, so that he will not fear prison—­either for himself or for you.”

And she had come to him quietly, all of the pretty triumph and playfulness gone, so that she stood like an angel in the soft glow of the skies, much older than he had ever seen her before, and smiled at him with a new and wonderful tenderness as she held out her hands to him.

Not until she lay in his arms, looking up at him from under her long lashes, did he dare to speak.  And then,

“Is it true—­what Father John has told me?” he asked.

“It is true,” she whispered, and the silken lashes covered her eyes.

Her hand crept up to his face in the silence that followed, and rested there; and with no desire to hear more than the three words she had spoken he crushed his lips in the sweet coils of her hair, and together, in that peace ands understanding, they listened to the gentle whisperings of the night.

“Roger,” she whispered at last.

“Yes, my NEWA—­”

“What does that mean, Roger?”

“It means—­beloved—­wife”

“Then I like it.  But I shall like the others—­one of the others—­ best.”

“My—­wife.”

“That—­that makes me happiest, Roger.  Your wife.  Oh, it is the sweetest word in the world, that—­and—­”

He felt her warm face hide itself softly against his neck.

“Mother,” he added.

“Yes—­Mother,” she repeated after him in an awed little voice.  “Oh, I have dreamed of Mothers since I have been old enough to dream, Roger!  My Mother—­I never had one that I can remember, except in a dream.  It must be wonderful to—­to—­have a Mother, Roger.”

“And yet, I think, not quite so wonderful as to be a Mother, my Nada.”

“Listen!” she whispered.

“It is the Leaf Bud singing.”

“A love song?”

“Yes, in Cree.”

She raised her head, so that her eyes were wide open, and looking at him.

“Since we came up here all this wonderful world has been promising song for me, Roger.  And since you came back to me it has been singing—­singing—­singing—­every hour of night and day.  Have you ever dreamed of leaving it, Roger—­of going down into that world of towns and cities of which Father John has told me so much?”

“Would you like to go there, Nada?”

“Only to look upon it, and come away.  I want to live in the forests, where I found you.  Always and always, Roger.”

She raised herself on tip-toe, and kissed him.

“I want to live near Yellow Bird and Sun Cloud—­please—­Mister Jolly Roger—­I do.  And Father John will go with us.  And we’ll be so happy there all together, Yellow Bird and Sun Cloud and Giselle and I—­oh!”