He too flushed. "It's life and death to me, Sylvie," he pleaded.

"Life and death--life _or_ death," she repeated strangely. She stood, as if turning the speech over in her mind, then gave her head a quick little shake like a diver coming to the surface of deep water, and moved a step toward Pete. "Are you coming, boy, or not? I want to feel your face."

"Do as she says," Hugh commanded harshly, and Pete came slowly to her and stood with his hands locked behind him, bending over the little figure. She put her hands on his shoulders and gave him a shake, and smiled.

"Such a big, strong boy! Where's your face?" It winced and paled under her touch. His eyes fell, shifted, could not meet Hugh's, who watched with unsteady breathing and white lips.

"Your face is as smooth as a girl's, Pete. What a wide, low forehead and crisp, short hair; it ripples back from your temples. You must be a pretty boy! A neat nose and a round, hard chin and--oh, Pete, Pete! I believe you have a dimple. How absurd! A great, long dimple like a slit in your right cheek. Why do you blink your eyes so? They're long eyes, with thick, short lashes. What a strong, round neck! I think I like your face."

She patted his cheek, the pat more like a smart slap. He pulled away.

"That's for disobedience. Come back. I'm not through with you. Where's your mouth? A big, long mouth. Pete, why does your mouth tremble?" Her hand fell from his lips, and she turned away. "Take me out for a walk, Hugh, please," she said. "This cabin is stuffy, now that the days are warm. I want to sit under the pines and listen to the river. You can tell me one of your wonderful stories about yourself."

"What does it mean, Bella?" Pete asked breathlessly when Hugh had gone out, not so much leading the girl as hurrying after her to save her from the rashness of her impetuous progress. "What does it mean?" Pete was as white as paper.

"I don't know." Bella came over from the window and stood by the fireplace, rolling her arms in her ap.r.o.n and shaking her head. "She's a crazy little witch. She'll drive us mad. Hugh is half mad now--have you noticed? She won't let him touch her. And you, poor boy! Pete, why don't you go away?"

"I've thought about it," he said. "I--I can't." He flung himself down in Hugh's chair and rested his head in his hands.

Bella bent over him. "Poor Pete! It's cruel for you--and," she added softly, uncertainly, "and for me."

"For you too, Bella?" He looked up at her through tears.

She nodded her head, and her face worked. "Perhaps you could take her back to her friends, Pete?"

"And leave Hugh? Didn't you hear what he said, Bella? Life and death! It would kill him if she should go away with me. Or--he'd follow and kill me."

"Yes," Bella a.s.sented somberly; "yes, he'd kill you. The devil is still living in his heart."

"No. Sylvie will marry him. Hugh gets his will." Pete shook his head.

"Wait a few days--you'll see. She's fighting against him now; I don't know why--some instinct. But though he tells her so many lies, he doesn't lie about one thing. He loves her. He does love her."

"No! No!" Bella's pa.s.sion, tearing its way through her long habit of repression, was almost terrifying. "He loves the image she has of him.

If he knew that she could see him as I do, his love would shrivel up like a flower in a drought. Hugh can't love the truth. He can't love anything but his delusions. Pete, tell her the truth. For G.o.d's sake, tell her the truth. Give her back her eyesight. Let her know his name, his story--his _face_!"

"Don't dare ask me, Bella!"

"Why not?" She seemed to be out of breath, like a person who has been climbing in thin air. Her lips were dry.

"Because--well, would you do it yourself?"

"Ah! He would hate me, if I did. But you, Pete, when Sylvie loved you--and if she knew you, she would surely love you; any woman would--why, then you could bear Hugh's hatred. I have only him--only him."

She locked her hands and lifted them to her forehead and was now making blind steps toward the kitchen door.

Pete followed her, and turning her about, drew down the hands from her face.

"Bella--_you_? Without saying a word? All these years?"

Under the first pressure of sympathy that her agony had ever known, she could not speak. She bent her head for an instant against his arm, then moved away from him, groping through the kitchen door, back to her unutterable loneliness.

Pete stood staring after her. A new Bella, this, not the cousin, the little cousin from the farm; not the nurse who had saved him from Hugh's hardness and told him limping fairy tales and doctored his hurts; not the accepted necessity, but a woman--a woman young, yes, young. In the instant when he had glimpsed her face, broken and quivering, the tight lips parted and the hair disarranged about flushed, quivering cheeks, the eyes deep with widened pupils, she had revealed beauty and pa.s.sion--the two halves of youth. How blind, how blind Hugh had been, blind and selfish and greedy, drinking up the woman's heart, feeding upon her youth!

CHAPTER XII

"When you sit so silent, Pete," Sylvie said softly, "I sometimes wonder if you're not staring at me."

"When I'm making a trap," he answered, smiling a little to himself and instinctively shifting his gaze, "I can't very well be staring at you, can I?"

He was kneeling on the ground before the cabin door, she sitting on the low step under the shadow of the roof. Her chin rested on the backs of her hands, the limber wrists bent up a little, the sleeves slipped away from her slim, white wrists. Her face was brightly rosy, her lips very red--at once a little stern, yet very sweet.

"Traps are cruel," she said.

"I think so myself. But we have to make a living, don't we?"

"Aren't you ashamed of yourself sometimes, Pete?"

"For making traps, and catching live things in them?"

"Yes. It's a sort of deceitful cruelty, catching the little blind, wandering wild things."

"Blind?" he repeated blankly, then flushed.

"Yes, blind. But it wasn't only that I meant."

"What else ought I to be ashamed of?"

"Of living on your brother." He winced sharply, but she went on coolly: "Of staying here in the wilderness. You are a big boy now. Many a boy of your age, even smaller and weaker, has gone out in the world to make his own way. There's no reason for _you_ to hide, is there? _You_ haven't sacrificed your life for anyone."

"No," he answered doubtfully, "n-no; but, you see, Sylvie, some one has to take the skins. It isn't safe for Hugh."

"Yes, of course. So that's what you'll do all your life--carry loads to and fro, between this cabin and the trading-station. But if Hugh goes away himself?"

"Yes?" he asked breathlessly.

His skillful hands paused in their fashioning of a snare.

"You know, of course, that he wants to take me away with him, to marry me, to start life again."

"And--and you will, Sylvie?"

"Give me your advice," she said. She pressed her red lips together; her face was bent upon him as though she watched.

"But," he stammered, "you tell me all the time, a dozen times a day, that I'm badly trained. What good's my advice?"

"_Are_ you badly trained?"