front teeth imperfect, she was an untidy, bedraggled object, used and
prematurely aged. Nevertheless the guide seemed attached to her, and when
on a Sunday the family went down to the settlement, following the trail
through the camp, Isabelle could see him help the woman at the wire fence,
carrying on one arm the youngest child, trailing his gun in the other hand.

"He must care for her!" Isabelle remarked.

"Why, of course. Why not?" her husband asked.

"But think--" It was all she could say, not knowing how to put into words
the mournful feeling this woman with her brood of young gave her. What joy,
what life for herself could such a creature have? Isabelle, her imagination
full of comfortable houses with little dinner parties, pretty furniture,
books, theatres, charity committees,--all that she conceived made up a
properly married young woman's life,--could not understand the existence of
the guide's wife. She was merely the man's woman, a creature to give him
children, to cook the food, to keep the fire going. He had the woods, the
wild things he hunted; he had, too, his time of drink and rioting; but she
was merely his drudge and the instrument of his animal passion. Well,
civilization had put a few milestones between herself and Molly Sewall! In
the years to come her mind would revert often to this family as she saw it
filing down the path to the settlement, the half-clothed children peeping
shyly at her, the woman trailing an old shawl from her bent shoulders, the
man striding on ahead with his gun and his youngest baby, careless so long
as there was a fire, a bit of food, and the forest to roam in....

So passed these days of their honeymoon, each one perfect, except for the
occasional disquieting presence of passion, of unappeasable desire in the
man. This male fire was as mysterious, as inexplicable to her as that first