For a few moments he was like a drunken man in his new joy.  Willingly he would have gambled his life on his chance of winning.  But confidence displaced none of his cunning.  He rubbed his hands and said: 

“Gawd, but won’t it be a surprise for Jan?  I told him that some day I’d come.  I told him!”

It would be a tremendous joke—­this surprise he had in store for Jan.  He chuckled over it again and again as Marie went about her work; and Marie’s face flushed and her eyes were bright and she laughed softly at this great love which Duval betrayed for her husband.  No; even the loss of his dogs and his outfit couldn’t spoil his pleasure!  Why should it?  He could get other dogs and another outfit—­but it had been three years since he had seen Jan Thoreau!  When Marie had finished her work he put his hand suddenly to his eyes and said: 

“Peste! but last night’s storm must have hurt my eyes.  The light blinds them, ma cheri.  Will you put it out, and sit down near me, so that I can see you as you talk, and tell me all that has happened to Jan Thoreau since that winter three years ago?”

She put out the light, and threw open the door of the box-stove.  In the dim firelight she sat on a stool beside Blake’s cot.  Her faith in him was like that of a child.  She was twenty-two.  Blake was fifteen years older.  She felt the immense superiority of his age.

This man, you must understand, had been more than a brother to Jan.  He had been a father.  He had risked his life.  He had saved him from death.  And Marie, as she sat at his side, did not think of him as a young man—­thirty-seven.  She talked to him as she might have talked to an elder brother of Jan’s, and with something like the same reverence in her voice.

It was unfortunate—­for her—­that Jan had loved Duval, and that he had never tired of telling her about him.  And now, when Blake’s caution warned him to lie no more about the days of plague in Duval’s cabin, she told him—­as he had asked her—­about herself and Jan; how they had lived during the last three years, the important things that had happened to them, and what they were looking forward to.  He caught the low note of happiness that ran through her voice; and with a laugh, a laugh that sounded real and wholesome, he put out his hand in the darkness—­for the fire had burned itself low—­and stroked her hair.  She did not shrink from the caress.  He was happy because they were happy.  That was her thought!  And Blake did not go too far.

She went on, telling Jan’s life away, betraying him In her happiness, crucifying him in her faith.  Blake knew that she was telling the truth.  She did not know that Jan had killed Francois Breault, and she believed that he would surely return—­in three days.  And the way he had left her that morning!  Yes, she confided even that to this big brother of Jan, her cheeks flushing hotly in the darkness—­how he had hated to go, and held her a long time in his arms before he tore himself away.