I couldn't know; and I couldn't be with you again without knowing."
"No; of course not."
"It was his low, ghastly lie to separate us. Can you kiss me now, Barney?"
"How I want to!" But he stood away from her, his hands locked behind him as that night they had loved; and she saw, as she met his eyes, how her flight had hurt her boy from the Indian shack in the woods. "This time, Ethel, if I have you, I must keep you."
"I came back to stay, Barney."
Yet he only clasped her hand, as before, when they went on; and she knew that, having once lost her, he dared not claim her again until she heard from his mother all there was to know.
Perhaps he had realized this as little as had she; for both now wished haste rather than delay, delightful as that was; so when they found Asa waiting with his team, they chose to drive the rest of the way, passing the fork of the road to St. Florentin to continue to Wheedon's beach.
"I'll see grandmother to-day," Ethel decided, as she gazed up toward the old house, "but first, cousin Agnes."
A cedar boat of Asa's own reliable manufacture was pulled up on the sand to ferry them, ajawaodjigade, to Resurrection Rock.
"We've a motor boat, but I thought this morning you'd like the tchiman," Barney said.
"I couldn't go out in anything else," Ethel replied; and, looking back at the beach, both thought of Madame Davol's story of the girl who had come there alone long ago in the Moon of the Breaking Snowshoes.
"What Mrs. Davol told us was true," Barney said.
