The voice of the living world calling her name sounded directly afterwards in the woods, and Jenieve leaped as if she were shot.  She had the instinct that her lover must not see this thing, for there were reasons of race and religion against it.  But she need not have feared that Pontiac would show himself, or his long and savage mourning for the destruction of the red man, to any descendant of the English.  As the bushes closed behind her she looked back:  the phosphoric blur was already so far in the west that she could hardly be sure she saw it again.  And the young agent of the Fur Company, breaking his way among leaves, met her with both hands; saying gayly, to save her the shock of talking about her mother:—­

“Come home, come home, my sweetbrier maid.  No wonder you smell of sweetbrier.  I am rank with it myself, rubbing against the dewy bushes.”