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Her arms reached up, and she drew his head down to her, so that for a time his visions were blinded in that sweet smother of her hair

The intimacy of that day was in itself like a dreareat North The sun shone The forest-walled shores of the river grew randeur, and the vast silence of unpeopled places brooded over the world To Kent it was as if they were drifting through Paradise Occasionally he found it necessary to work the big sweep, for still water was gradually giving way to a swifter current

Beyond that there was no labor for him to perform It seeer was being left farther and still farther behind the for sound that ht come from behind--at times possessed of the exquisite thrills of children in their happiness--Kent and Marette found the gulf of strangeness passing swiftly away froedy, or again of the death of John Barkley But Kent told of his days in the North, of his aloneness, of the wild, weird love in his soul for the deepest wildernesses And from that he went away back into dim and distant yesterdays, alive with mellowed s Marette listened with glowing eyes, with low laughter, or with breath that rose or fell with his own emotions

She told of her own days down at school and of their appalling loneliness; of childhood spent in the forests; of the desire to live there always But she did not speak intimately of herself or her life in itsof the ho of father or mother, sisters or brothers There was no embarrassment in her omissions And Kent did not question He knew that those were as she would tell him when that promised hour came, the hour when he would tell her they were safe

There began to possess hierness for this hour, when they should leave the river and take to the forests He explained to Marette why they could not float on indefinitely The river was the one great artery through which ran the blood of all traffic to the far North It was patrolled Sooner or later they would be discovered In the forests, with a thousand untrod trails to choose, they would be safe He had only one reason for keeping to the river until they passed through the Death Chute It would carry theh which it would be impossible for them to make their way at this season of the year Otherwise he would have gone ashore now He loved the river, had faith in it, but he knew that not until the deep forests sed them, as a vast ocean ss a ship, would they be beyond the peril that threatened the