For a quarter of an hour longer Kent mopped at the floor of the scow, and then—­with a suddenness that drew him up as if a whip-lash had snapped behind him—­he caught another aroma in the clean, forest-scented air.  It was bacon and coffee!  He had believed that Marette was taking her time in putting on dry footwear and making some sort of morning toilet.  Instead of that, she was getting breakfast.  It was not an extraordinary thing to do.  To fry bacon and make coffee was not, in any sense, a remarkable achievement.  But at the present moment it was the crowning touch to Kent’s paradise.  She was getting his breakfast!  And—­coffee and bacon—­To Kent those two things had always stood for home.  They were intimate and companionable.  Where there were coffee and bacon, he had known children who laughed, women who sang, and men with happy, welcoming faces.  They were home-builders.

“Whenever you smell coffee and bacon at a cabin,” O’Connor had always said, “they’ll ask you in to breakfast if you knock at the door.”

But Kent was not recalling his old trail mate’s words.  In the present moment all other thoughts were lost in the discovery that Marette was getting breakfast—­for him.

He went to the door and listened.  Then he opened it and looked in.  Marette was on her knees before the open door of the stove, toasting bread on two forks.  Her face was flushed pink.  She had not taken time to brush her hair, but had woven it carelessly into a thick braid that fell down her back.  She gave a little exclamation of mock disappointment when she saw Kent.

“Why didn’t you wait?” she remonstrated.  “I wanted to surprise you.”

“You have,” he said.  “And I couldn’t wait.  I had to come in and help.”

He was inside the door and on his knees beside her.  As he reached for the two forks, his lips pressed against her hair.  The pink deepened in Marette’s face, and the soft little note that was like laughter came into her throat.  Her hand caressed his cheek as she rose to her feet, and Kent laughed back.  And after that, as she arranged things on the shelf table, her hand now and then touched his shoulder, or his hair, and two or three times he heard that wonderful little throat-note that sent through him a wild pulse of happiness.  And then, he sitting in the low chair and she on the stool, they drew close together before the board that answered as a table, and ate their breakfast.  Marette poured his coffee and stirred sugar and condensed milk in it, and so happy was Kent that he did not tell her he used neither milk nor sugar in his coffee.  The morning sun burst through the little window, and through the open door Kent pointed to the glory of it on the river and in the shimmering green of the forests slipping away behind.  When they had finished, Marette went outside with him.