In his eagerness to join Josephine Philip had reached the outer
door before it occurred to him that he was without hat or coat and
had on only a pair of indoor moccasin slippers. He would still
have gone on, regardless of this utter incongruity of dress, had
he not known that John Adare would see him through the window. He
partly opened the hall door and looked out. Josephine was halfway
to the forest. He turned swiftly back to his room, threw on a
coat, put his moccasins on over the soft caribou skin slippers,
caught up his cap, and hurried back to the door. Josephine had
disappeared into the edge of the forest. He held himself to a walk
until he reached the cover of the spruce, but no sooner was he
beyond Adare's vision than he began to run. Three or four hundred
yards in the forest he overtook Josephine.
He had come up silently in the soft snow, and she turned, a little
startled, when he called her name.
"You, Philip!" she exclaimed, the colour deepening quickly in her
cheeks. "I thought you were with father in the big room."
She had never looked lovelier to him. From the top of her hooded
head to the hem of her short skirt she was dressed in a soft and
richly glowing red. Her eyes shone gloriously this morning, and
about her mouth there was a tenderness and a sweetness which had
not been there the night before. The lines that told of her strain
and grief were gone. She seemed like a different Josephine now,
confessing in this first thrilling moment of their meeting that
she, too, had been living in the memory of what had passed between
them a few hours before. And yet in the gentle welcome of her
smile there was a mingling of sadness and of pathos that tempered
Philip's joy as he came to her and took her hands.
"My Josephine," he cried softly.
She did not move as he bent down. Again he felt the warm, sweet
thrill of her lips. He would have kissed her again, have clasped
her close in his arms, but she drew away from him gently.
"I am glad you saw me--and followed, Philip," she said, her clear,
beautiful eyes meeting his. "It is a wonderful thing that has
happened to us. And we must talk about it. We must understand. I
was on my way to the pack. Will you come?"
She offered him her hand, so childishly confident, so free of her
old restraint now, that he took it without a word and fell in at
her side. He had rushed to her tumultuously. On his lips had been
a hundred things that he had wanted to say. He had meant to claim
her in the full ardour of his love--and now, quietly, without
effort, she had worked a wonderful change in him. It was as if
their experience had not happened yesterday, but yesteryear; and
the calm, sweet yielding of her lips to him again, the warm
pressure of her hand, the illimitable faith in him that shone in
her eyes, filled him with emotions which for a space made him
speechless. It was as if some wonderful spirit had come to them
while they slept, so that now there was no necessity for
explanation or speech. In all the fulness of her splendid
womanhood Josephine had accepted his love, and had given him her
own in return. Every fibre in his being told him that this was so.
And yet she had uttered no word of love, and he had spoken none of
the things that had been burning in his soul.
They had gone but a few steps when Josephine paused close to the
fallen trunk of a huge cedar. With her mittened hands she brushed
off the snow, seated herself, and motioned Philip to sit beside
her.
"Let us talk here," she said. And then she asked, a little
anxiously, "You left my father believing in you--in us?"
"Fully," replied Philip. He took her face between his two hands
and turned it up to him. Her fingers clasped his arms. But they
made no effort to pull down the hands that held her eyes looking
straight into his own.
"He believes in us," he repeated. "And you, Josephine, you love
me?"
He saw the tremulous forming of a word on her lips, but she did
not speak. A deeper glow came into her eyes. Gently her fingers
crept to his wrists, and she took down his hands from her face,
and drew him to the seat at her side.
"Yes, Philip," she said then, in a voice so low and calm that it
roused a new sense of fear in him. "There can be no sin in telling
you that--after last night. For we understand each other now. It
has filled me with a strange happiness. Do you remember what you
said to me in the canoe? It was this: 'In spite of all that may
happen, I will receive more than all else in the world could give
me. For I will have known you, and you will be my salvation.'
Those words have been ringing in my heart night and day. They are
there now. And I understand them; I understand you. Hasn't some
one said that it is better to have loved and lost than never to
have loved at all? Yes, it is a thousand times better. The love
that is lost is often the love that is sweetest and purest, and
leads you nearest Heaven. Such is Jean's love for his lost wife.
Such must be your love for me. And when you are gone my life will
still be filled with the happiness which no grief can destroy. I
did not know these things--until last night. I did not know what
it meant to love as Jean must love. I do now. And it will be my
salvation up in these big forests, just as you have said that it
will be yours down in that other world to which you will go."
He had listened to her like one stricken by a sudden grief. He
understood her, even before she had finished, and his voice came
in a sudden broken cry of protest and of pain.
"Then you mean--that after this--you will still send me away?
After last night? It is impossible! You have told me, and it makes
no difference, except to make me love you more. Become my wife. We
can be married secretly, and no one will ever know. My God, you
cannot drive me away now, Josephine! It is not justice. If you
love me--it is a crime!"
In the fierceness of his appeal he did not notice how his words
were driving the colour from her face. Still she answered him
calmly, in her voice a strange tenderness. Strong in her faith in
him, she put her hands to his shoulders, and looked into his eyes.
"Have you forgotten?" she asked gently. "Have you forgotten all
that you promised, and all that I told you? There has been no
change since then--no change that frees me. There can be no
change. I love you, Philip. Is that not more than you expected? If
one can give one's soul away, I give mine to you. It is yours for
all eternity. Is it not enough? Will you throw that away--because
--my body--is not free?"
Her voice broke in a dry sob; but she still looked into his eyes,
waiting for him to answer--for the soul of him to ring true. And
he knew what must be. His hands lay clenched between them. Jean
seemed to rise up before him again at the grave-sides, and from
his lips he forced the words:
"Then there is something more--than the baby?"
"Yes," she replied, and dropped her hands from his shoulders.
"There is that of which I warned you--something which you could
not know if you lived a thousand years."
He caught her to him now, so close that his breath swept her face.
"Josephine, if it was the baby alone, you would give yourself to
me? You would be my wife?"
"Yes."
Strength leaped back into him, the strength that made her love
him. He freed her and stood back from the log, his face ablaze
with the old fighting spirit. He laughed, and held out his arms
without taking her.
"Then you have not killed my hope!" he cried.
His enthusiasm, the strength and sureness of him as he stood
before her, sent the flush back into her own face. She rose, and
reached to one of his outstretched hands with her own.
"You must hope for nothing more than I have given you," she said.
"A month from to-day you will leave Adare House, and will never
return."
"A month!" He breathed the words as if in a dream.
"Yes, a month from to-day. You will go off on a snowshoe journey.
You will never return, and they will think that you have died in
the deep snows. You have promised me this. And you will not fail
me?"
"What I have promised I will do," he replied, and his voice was
now as calm as her own. "And for this one month--you are mine!"
"To love as I have given you love, yes."
For a moment he folded her in his arms; and then he drew back her
hood so that he might lay a hand on her shining hair, and his eyes
were filled with a wonderful illumination as he looked into her
upturned face.
"A month is a long time, my Josephine," he whispered. "And after
that month there are other months--years and years of them, and
through years, if it must be, my hope will live. You cannot
destroy it, and some day, somewhere, you will send word to me.
Will you promise to do that?"
"If such a thing becomes possible, yes."
"Then I am satisfied," he said. "I am going to fight for you,
Josephine. No man ever fought for a woman as I am going to fight
for you. I don't know what this strange thing is that separates
us. But I can think of nothing terrible enough to frighten me. I
am going to fight, mentally and physically, day and night--until
you are my own. I cannot lose you now. That will be what God never
meant to be. I shall keep all my promises to you. You have given
me a month, and much can happen in that time. If at the end of the
month I have failed--I will go. But you will not send me away. For
I shall win!"
So sure was he, so filled with the conviction of his final
triumph, so like a god to her in this moment of his greatest
strength, that Josephine drew slowly away from him, her breath
coming quickly, her eyes filled with the star-like pride and glory
of the Woman who has found a Master. For a moment they stood
facing each other in the white stillness of the forest, and in
that moment there came to them the low and mourning wail of a dog
beyond them. And then the full voice of the pack burst through the
wilderness, a music that was wild and savage, and yet through
which there ran a strange and plaintive note for Josephine.
"They have caught us in the wind," she said, holding out her hand
to him. "Come, Philip. I want you to love my beasts."