love ze great God, but not baptize by missioner! No--no--no!"

Cummins turned upon him in astonishment. Before him Jan Thoreau stood
for a minute like one gone mad, his whole being consumed in a passion
terrible to look upon. Lithe giant of muscle and, fearlessness that he
was, Cummins involuntarily drew back a step, and the mainspring of
instinct within him prompted him to lift a hand, as if to ward off a
leaping thing from his breast.

Jan noted the backward step, the guarded uplift of hand, and with an
agonized cry he buried his face in his hands. In another instant he
had turned, and, before Cummins' startled voice found words, had
opened the door and run out into the night. The man saw him darting
swiftly toward the forest, and called to him, but there was no
response.

There was a hot fire burning in Jan's brain, a blazing, writhing
contortion of things that brought a low moaning from his lips. He ran
tirelessly and swiftly until he sank down upon the snow in a silent
place far from where he had left John Cummins. His eyes still blazed
with their strange fire upon the desolation about him, his fingers
clenched and unclenched themselves, digging their nails into his
flesh, and he spoke softly to himself, over and over again, the name
of the little Melisse.

Painting itself each instant more plainly through the tumult of his
emotions was what Jan had come to know as the picture in his brain.
Shadowy and indistinct at first, in pale, elusive lines of mental
fabric, he saw the picture growing; and in its growth he saw first the
soft, sweet outlines of a woman's face, and then great luring eyes,