She smiled at him in a tired
little way, and he saw nothing but sweetness and truth in her
face. In an instant every suspicion was swept away. He felt like a
criminal for having doubted her; and for a moment he was on the
point of confessing to her what had been in his thoughts. He
restrained himself, and went to the river to wash the pot-black
from his hands. Jeanne was a mystery to him, a mystery that
delighted him and filled him each moment with a deeper love. He
saw the life and freedom of the forests in her every movement--in
the gesture of her hands, the bird-like poise of her pretty head,
the lithe grace of her slender body. She breathed the forests. It
glowed in her eyes, in the rich red of her lips, and revealed its
beauty and strength in the unconfined wealth of her gold-brown
hair. In a dozen ways he could see her primitiveness, her kinship
to the wilderness. She had told him the truth. Her eyes smiled
truth at him as he came up the bank. No other woman's eyes had
ever looked at him like hers; none had he seen so beautiful. And
yet in them he saw nothing that she would not have expressed in
words--companionship, trust, thankfulness that he was there to
care for her. Such eyes as those belonged only to the wilderness,
brimming with the flawless beauty of an undefiled nature.
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