It was a breath of crushed violets,
sweet as the air he was breathing, violets gathered in the deep
cool of the forest, a whisper of sweetness about her, as if on her
bosom she wore always the living flowers. He fancied her gathering
them last bloom-time, a year ago, alone, her feet seeking out the
damp mosses, her little fingers plucking the smiling and laughing
faces of the violet flowers to be treasured away in fragrant
sachets, as gentle as the wood-thrush's note, compared with the
bottled aromas fifteen hundred miles south. It seemed to be a
physical part of her, a thing born of the glow in her cheeks, a
living exhalation of her soft red lips--and yet only when he was
near, very near, did the life of it reach him.
She did not know he was thinking these things. There was nothing
in his voice, he thought, to betray him. He was sure she was
unconscious of the fight he was making. Her eyes smiled and
laughed with him, she counted her stitches, her fingers worked,
and she talked to him as she might have talked to a friend of St.
Pierre's. She told him how St. Pierre had made the barge, the
largest that had ever been on the river, and that he had built it
entirely of dry cedar, so that it floated like a feather wherever
there was water enough to run a York boat.
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