All his life womanhood had been the most beautiful thing in the
world to him. And now there was forced upon him the dread
conviction that he had insulted it. He did not stop to argue that
the overwhelming completeness of his love had excused him. What he
thought of now was that he had found Josephine alone, had declared
that love for her before he knew her name, and had followed it up
by act and word which he now felt to be dishonourable. And yet,
after all, would he have recalled what had happened if he could?
He asked himself that question as he returned to help Jean. And he
found no answer to it until they were in their canoes again and
headed up the lake, Josephine sitting with her back to him, her
thick silken braid falling in a sinuous and sunlit rope of red
gold over her shoulders. Then he knew that he would not.

Jean gave little rest that day, and by noon they had covered
twenty miles of the lake-way. An hour for dinner, and they went
on. At times Josephine used her paddle, and not once during the
day did she sit with her face to Philip. Late in the afternoon
they camped on a portage fifty miles from Adare House.

There were no stars or moon in the sky this night. The wind had
changed, and came from the north. In it was the biting chill of
the Arctic, and overhead was a gray-dun mass of racing cloud. A
dozen times Jean turned his face anxiously from the fire into the
north, and held wet fingers high over his head to see if in the
air was that peculiar sting by which the forest man forecasts the
approach of snow.

At last he said to Philip: "The wind will grow, M'sieur," and