Her voice at his shoulder startled him.

"Wherefore this long communion with nature, my captain?" she gaily asked.
"Behold, my, lord's hot cakes are ready for the pan and his servant to
wait upon him." She gave him a demure smiling little curtsy of mock
deference.

Never had her distracting charm been more in evidence. He had not seen her
since they parted on the previous night. He had built for himself a cot in
the woodshack, and had contrived a curtain that could be drawn in front of
her bed in the living-room. Thus he could enter in the morning, light the
fires, and start breakfast without disturbing her. She had dressed her
hair, now in a different way, so that it fell in low waves back from the
forehead and was bunched at the nape of her neck. The light swiftness of
her dainty grace, the almost exaggerated carnation of the slightly parted
lips, the glad eagerness that sparked her eyes, brought out effectively
the picturesqueness of her beauty.

His grave eyes rested on her so long that a soft glow mantled her cheeks.
Perhaps her words had been too free, though she had not meant them so. For
the first time some thought of the conventions distressed her. Ought she
to hold herself more in reserve toward him? Must she restrain her natural
impulses to friendliness?

His eyes released her presently, but not before she read in them the
feelings that had softened them as they gazed into hers. They mirrored his
poignant pleasure at the delight of her sweet slenderness so close to him,
his perilous joy at the intimacy fate had thrust upon them. Shyly her lids
fell to the flushed cheeks.