He looked more closely, and drew back step
by step, until he was in the proper focus to bring out every
expression in the lovely face. In the picture he saw each moment a
greater resemblance to Jeanne. The eyes, the hair, the sweetness
of the mouth, the smile, brought to him a vision of Jeanne
herself. The woman in the picture was older than Jeanne, and his
first thought was that it must be a sister, or her mother. It came
to him in the next breath that this would be impossible, for
Jeanne had been found by Pierre in the deep snows, on her dead
mother's breast. And this was a painting of life, of youth, of
beauty, and not of death and starvation.
He returned the forbidden picture to the position in which he had
found it against the wall, half ashamed of the act and thoughts
into which his curiosity had led him. And yet, after all, it was
not curiosity. He told himself that as he washed himself and
groomed his disheveled clothes.
An hour had passed when he heard a low tap at the door, and Pierre
came in. In that time the half-breed had undergone a
transformation. He was dressed in an exquisite coat of yellow
buckskin, with the same old-fashioned cuffs he had worn when
Philip first saw him, trousers of the same material, buckled below
the knees, and boot-moccasins with flaring tops.
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