She seemed, for a moment, to have dropped a
curtain from between herself and him.
Her red lips trembled, she smiled at him, and then she faced the
river again, and he leaned a little forward, so that a breath of
wind floated a shimmering tress of her hair against his cheek. An
irresistible impulse seized upon him. He leaned still nearer to
her, holding his breath, until his lips softly touched one of the
velvety coils of her hair. And then he stepped back. Shame swept
over him. His heart rose and choked him, and his fists were
clenched at his side. She had not noticed what he had done, and
she seemed to him like a bird yearning to fly out through the
window, throbbing with the desire to answer the chanting song that
came over the water. And then she was smiling up again into his
face hardened with the struggle which he was making with himself.
"My people are happy," she cried. "Even in storm they laugh and
sing. Listen, m'sieu. They are singing La Derniere Domaine. That
is our song. It is what we call our home, away up there in the
lost wilderness where people never come--the Last Domain. Their
wives and sweethearts and families are up there, and they are
happy in knowing that today we shall travel a few miles nearer to
them.
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