The stream of talk went on, leaving Dick still more angry. Her mother! What in the name of sense had possessed Jennifer to saddle herself with her mother? What was he going to do with her mother? And how was he going to persuade her, even though he persuaded Jennifer? Even though? Sudden dread of the doubt which those words implied chilled him. He forgot the difficulties; he forgot the sacrifice; he forgot his anger. He remembered only that he wanted her—wanted her; that she was the one sweet and sacred thing to him—the one salve to all the aches and bruises that life had given him.
He went back to his corner of the bunk-room which he shared with four other men, and sat on his bunk with his head in his hands.
"I've got to think this out—I've got to think this out," he said, over and over. But his will would not hold any one point true. Again and again it swung him up into the wind, and he shivered, helpless as a ship in irons.
Tempest and Andree: Jennifer and Ducane: his own good name and the way men spoke of it from Herschel across to Fullerton and south into Regina itself. It was not his private name that he cared about. That had been blurred long years ago. But he was jealous for his work. His work. The one thing which he had never betrayed or belittled or neglected. The one thing which he had served purely, according to his lights. He had dreaded always that life and passion might call on him to cash in his brain also at the bank of his heart, and he knew that if ever that day came it would leave him naked of something which he never would have any more. His work was the one firm thing which he had clung to, and he knew, with a terrible clearness of vision, that even with Jennifer's arms about him, his soul would be sick for that world still, and for the pride which he had lost.
He stood up at last; changed his boots, thrust his cheque-book into his inner pocket, and went down to ask the O.C. for leave. He banked in Regina, and it was wise for a deserter to draw all his money out betimes, for, as he knew well, a cheque is often one of those little threads by which a man ties himself to that which he would escape.
And the next morning, across the snow-bound prairies,
