She no longer betrayed the hurt of his question, and so sweet was
the laughter of her eyes and lips that he laughed back at her, in
spite of his embarrassment. Then, all at once, she became serious.

"I am terribly unfair to you," she apologized gently; and then,
looking across the water, she added: "Yes, I've lived almost all
of those twenty years up here--among the forests. They sent me to
the Mission school at Fort Churchill, over on Hudson's Bay, for
three years; and after that, until I was seventeen, I had a little
white-haired English governess at Adare House. If she had lived--
" Her hands clenched the sides of the canoe, and she looked
straight away from Philip. She seemed to force the words that came
from her lips then: "When I was eighteen I went to Montreal--and
lived there a year, That is all--that one year--away from--my
forests--"

He almost failed to hear the last words, and he made no effort to
reply. He kept his canoe nearer to Jean's, so that frequently they
were running side by side. In the quick fall of the early northern
night the sun was becoming more and more of a red haze in the sky
as it sank farther toward the western forests. Josephine had
changed her position, so that she now sat facing the bow of the
canoe. She leaned a little forward, her elbows resting in her lap,
her chin tilted in the cup of her hands, looking steadily ahead,
and for a long time no sound but the steady dip, dip, dip of the
two paddles broke the stillness of their progress. Scarcely once
did Philip take his eyes from her. Every turn, every passing of
shadow and light, each breath of wind that set stirring the
shimmering tresses of her hair, made her more beautiful to him.