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"Yes. Not as a sister any longer, Melisse, but as a WOMAN!" Gravois did not stay to see the effect of his last words. Only he knew, as he went through the door, that her eyes were following him, and that if he looked at her she would call him back. So he shut the door quickly behind him, fearing that he had already said too much. Cummins and Jan came in together at suppertime.
And the cakes the bread the pies! You must delay the supper my lady, for the good Lord deliver me if I haven't spilled all the dough on the floor! Swas-s-s- s-h such a mess! And my Iowaka did nothing but laugh and call me a clumsy dear!" "You're terribly in love, Jean," cried Melisse, laughing until her eyes were wet; "just like some of the people in the books which Jan and I read."
"Melisse, Melisse, it was just fifteen years ago that I came in through that forest out there, starved and dying, and played my violin when your mother died. You were a little baby then, and since that night you have never pleased me more than now!" He dropped her hand and turned squarely to the door, to hide what he knew had come into his face.
"A year," he repeated to himself, again and again, and once, when Kazan rubbed against his leg and looked up into his face, he said, "Ah, Kazan, our Melisse went away with the Englishman. May the Great God give them happiness!" The forest claimed him more than ever after this.
In the stock of his rifle he would scratch a few last words to Melisse. He even arranged the words in his brain four of them "Melisse, I love you." He repeated them to himself as he staggered on, and that night, beside the fire he built, he began by carving her name. "To-morrow," he said softly, "I will do the rest." He was growing very hungry, but he did not touch the flour.
"Which I'm not going to fill for five miles, at least," declared Melisse. "Isn't it a glorious morning, Jan? I feel as if I can run from here to Ledoq's!" With a crack of his whip and a shout, Jan swung the dogs across the open, with Melisse running lightly at his side. From their cabin Jean and Iowaka called out shrill adieus.
Three weeks later, when Mukee returned to Lac Bain, he said that Jan had traveled to Churchill like one who had lost his tongue, and that far into the nights he had played lonely dirges upon his violin. It was a long winter for Cummins and Melisse. It was a longer one for Jan.
Barbie caught the words, but she never made a reply or asked a single question; she just laid the quirt without a sting over Hawkins's foreshoulder an' raced on. I stopped long enough to tell Melisse that I would send the buckboard after her, an' then I took after Barbie. It looked like a race, sure enough. I was worried.
He struggled against the desire that had grown with his years until he believed that he had crushed it and stamped it out of his existence. In his life there came to be but one rising and one setting of the sun. Melisse was his universe. She crowded his heart until beyond her he began to lose visions of any other world. Each day added to his joy.
He noticed, too, that no fires were built near the spot consecrated to the memory of the dead woman; and to his cabin the paths in the snow became deeper and wider where trod the wild forest men who came to look upon the little Melisse. These were days of unprecedented prosperity and triumph for the baby, as they were for the company.
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