XIV

A quarter of an hour later, with Mary Josephine at his side, he was walking down the green slope toward the Saskatchewan.  In that direction lay the rims of timber, the shimmering valley, and the broad pathways that opened into the plains beyond.

The town was at their backs, and Keith wanted it there.  He wanted to keep McDowell, and Shan Tung, and Miriam Kirkstone as far away as possible, until his mind rode more smoothly in the new orbit in which it was still whirling a bit unsteadily.  More than all else he wanted to be alone with Mary Josephine, to make sure of her, to convince himself utterly that she was his to go on fighting for.  He sensed the nearness and the magnitude of the impending drama.  He knew that today he must face Shan Tung, that again he must go under the battery of McDowell’s eyes and brain, and that like a fish in treacherous waters he must swim cleverly to avoid the nets that would entangle and destroy him.  Today was the day—­the stage was set, the curtain about to be lifted, the play ready to be enacted.  But before it was the prologue.  And the prologue was Mary Josephine’s.

At the crest of a dip halfway down the slope they had paused, and in this pause he stood a half-step behind her so that he could look at her for a moment without being observed.  She was bareheaded, and it came upon him all at once how wonderful was a woman’s hair, how beautiful beyond all other things beautiful and desirable.  In twisted, glowing seductiveness it was piled up on Mary Josephine’s head, transformed into brown and gold glories by the sun.  He wanted to put forth his hand to it, and bury his fingers in it, and feel the thrill and the warmth and the crush of the palpitant life of it against his own flesh.  And then, bending a little forward, he saw under her long lashes the sheer joy of life shining in her eyes as she drank in the wonderful panorama that lay below them to the west.  Last night’s rain had freshened it, the sun glorified it now, and the fragrance of earthly smells that rose up to them from it was the undefiled breath of a thing living and awake.  Even to Keith the river had never looked more beautiful, and never had his yearnings gone out to it more strongly than in this moment, to the river and beyond—­and to the back of beyond, where the mountains rose up to meet the blue sky and the river itself was born.  And he heard Mary Josephine’s voice, joyously suppressed, exclaiming softly,

“Oh, Derry!”

His heart was filled with gladness.  She, too, was seeing what his eyes saw in that wonderland.  And she was feeling it.  Her hand, seeking his hand, crept into his palm, and the fingers of it clung to his fingers.  He could feel the thrill of the miracle passing through her, the miracle of the open spaces, the miracle of the forests rising billow on billow to the purple mists of the horizon, the miracle of the golden Saskatchewan rolling slowly and peacefully