At the edge of the pool twenty steps from him was kneeling a woman.  Her back was toward him, and in that moment she was as motionless as the rock that towered over her.  Along with the rippling drone of the stream, without reason on his part—­without time for thought-there leaped through his amazed brain the words of Jasper, the factor, and he knew that he was looking upon the miracle that makes “God’s Country”—­a white woman!

The sun shone down upon her bare head.  Over her slightly bent shoulders swept a glory of unbound hair that rippled to the sand.  Black tresses, even velvety as the crow’s wing, might have meant Cree or half-breed.  But this at which he stared—­all that he saw of her—­was the brown and gold of the autumnal tintings that had painted pictures for him that day.

Slowly she raised her head, as if something had given her warning of a presence behind, and as she hesitated in that birdlike, listening poise a breath of wind from the little valley stirred her hair in a shimmering veil that caught a hundred fires of the sun.  And then, as he crushed back his first impulse to cry out, to speak to her, she rose erect beside the pool, her back still to him, and hidden to the hips in her glorious hair.

Her movement revealed a towel partly spread out on the sand, and a comb, a brush, and a small toilet bag.  Philip did not see these.  She was turning, slowly, scanning the rocks beyond the valley.

Like a thing carven out of stone he stood, still speechless, still staring, when she faced him.

CHAPTER TWO

A face like that into which Philip looked might have come to him from out of some dream of paradise.  It was a girl’s face.  Eyes of the pure blue of the sky above met his own.  Her lips were a little parted and a little laughing.  Before he had uttered a word, before he could rise out of the stupidity of his wonder, the change came.  A fear that he could not have forgotten if he had lived through a dozen centuries leaped into the lovely eyes.  The half-laughing lips grew tense with terror.  Quick as the flash of powder there had come into her face a look that was not that of one merely startled.  It was fear—­horror—­a great, gripping thing that for an instant seemed to crush the life from her soul.  In another moment it was gone, and she swayed back against the face of the rock, clutching a hand at her breast.

“My God, how I frightened you!” gasped Philip.

“Yes, you frightened me,” she said.

Her white throat was bare, and he could see the throb of it as she made a strong effort to speak steadily.  Her eyes did not leave him.  As he advanced a step he saw that unconsciously she cringed closer to the rock.

“You are not afraid—­now?” he asked.  “I wouldn’t have frightened you for the world.  And sooner than hurt you I’d—­I’d kill myself.  I just stumbled here by accident.  And I haven’t seen a white woman—­for two years.  So I stared—­stared—­and stood there like a fool.”