These secret rites in her bedroom being ended, and Roxy diverted from her movements, she slipped off into the woods path, sometimes running breathlessly towards St. James. The impetus which carried Emeline increased with each journey. At first she was able to check it in the woods depths, but it finally drove her until the village houses were in sight. When this at last happened, and she stood gazing, fascinated, down the tunnel of forest path, the King of Beaver spoke behind her. Emeline screamed in terror and took hold of a bush, to make it a support and a veil. “Have I been a patient man?” he inquired, standing between her and her uncle's house. “I waited for you to come to me.” “I am obliged to go somewhere,” said Emeline, plucking the leaves and unsteadily shifting her eyes about his feet. “I cannot stay on the farm all the time.” Through numbness she felt the pricking of a sharp rapture. The King of Beaver smiled, seeing betrayed in her face the very vertigo of joy. [Illustration: You will give yourself to me now 142] “You will give yourself to me now?” he winningly begged, venturing out-stretched hands. “You have felt the need as I have? Do you think the days have been easy to me? When you were on your knees I was on my knees too. Every day you came in this direction I came as far as I dared, to meet you. Are the obstacles all passed?” “No,” said Emeline. He was making her ask herself that most insidious question, “Why could not the other have been like this?” “Tell me--can you say, 'I hate you,' now?” “No,” said Emeline. “I have grown to be a better man since you said you hated me. The miracle cannot be forced. Next time?” He spoke wistfully. “No,” Emeline answered, holding to the bush. She kept her eyes on the ground while he talked, and glanced up when she replied. He stood with his hat off. The flakes of sun touched his head and the fair skin of his forehead. He moved towards Emeline, and she retreated around the bush. Without hesitating he passed, making a salutation, and went on by himself to St. James. She watched his rapid military walk furtively, her eyebrows crouching, her lips rippling with passionate tremors. Then she took to flight homeward, her skirts swishing through the woods with a rush like the wind. The rebound was as violent as the tension had been. There were few festivities on Beaver Island, the Mormon families living a pastoral life, many of them yet taxed by the struggle for existence. Crops shot up rank and strong in the short Northern summer. Soft cloud masses sailed over the island, and rain-storms marched across it with drums of thunder which sent reverberations along the water world. Or fogs rolled in, muffling and obliterating homesteads.