She knew it, even as she knew him for what he was in the eyes of men. And he knew that his need was great; his need for her love, for her strength, for herself. And she bowed her head in the rough wood pew and offered herself steadfastly, bravely, to him and for him in the desire that Ducane might one day come to his full stature and stand upright by his own clean power.
Young Forbes stumbled out a few bars on the grunting harmonium, and Jennifer lifted her voice shakily in the quaint old hymn beginning:
"We are but little children weak,
Nor born to any high estate. . ."
And then, on the third line, a new voice surged up behind her—bold, strong and true. It broke the thread of Jennifer's thoughts, jerking her into acute knowledge of it. A man's voice: young, by the nerve of it, and yet trained. A gentleman's voice: but not Tempest's, and not the husky tones of Ogilvie, the Oxford man who was drinking himself to death on a remittance. It was not Slicker. It could not be—and then Jennifer's mind sprang to the solution. It was that new man at the barracks of whom Ducane had told her, half-whispering, that he was afraid. The confession had burned her with shame and disgust. Now, hearing the man made concrete by that verile voice, her whole nature roused to defiance and to an oversweeping desire to see him, face to face.
All through the hymn the impulse pulled at her; and with the "Amen" she turned, as though seeking a wrap on the seat-back, and caught Dick's eyes full. There was interest and bold amusement and cynical understanding in them, and she swung back instantly, with the red leaping up her face. Dick flipped open a stray Cree hymn-book; and, stooping decorously through the following prayer, made the first sketch of that sweet-crooked mouth and those wide eyes that he was to know by heart in later days.
He ripped the page away and thrust it in his breast-pocket when he followed her out. But Jennifer went down the white ways swiftly, and Dick halted to walk
