she asked almost belligerently. "You—you might be—any one!"
He swung about suddenly, one hand going to the pocket where he had put away the ring.
"I?" he said, hot blood suffusing his face. "Sometimes I've dreamed about being—some one, Miss Carew; then I've thought what that meant and—" He did not finish but jerked up, as though shaking himself out of his realm of speculation and into the actual. "At Quesnel you wanted to telephone to your grandfather," he reminded, glancing at the instrument beside the chimney. "Redbird said the line was working this far."
"Yes," Ethel said but arose only to take down cups and a stoneware pot from the shelf. She found tea leaves in one of the cans and a few crackers in another; he moved a bench to act as table beside the fire, and she spread their board.
The single window in the cabin was to the south, and the sun was shining through in a golden square upon the floor; the fire was crackling in leaping red flames; and, as Loutrelle removed the kettle from the crane and poured the boiling water into the teapot, steam rose cozily from the spout.
"You like tea?" Ethel said, looking up. "I didn't ask you."
"I was three years with the Canadians," he replied.
She laughed, reasonlessly but happily. He smiled in the pleasant way he had and, without waiting for the formality of other invitation, he sat down upon the bench beside her,—not close to her nor so far away that his care to avoid closeness was awkward.
Outside the cabin, there was no sound or movement; not a slight stir of breeze remained. The tracery
