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Rh springs; jerked it up by the arm, and bit off the oath on his lips.

"What are you doing here, Andree?" he demanded.

He had first seen Grange's Andree when she was losing money to some men in Grange's back-parlour. Besides, respect for his kind was not natural growth with him, and what he had had was long since gone. He shook her.

"Stop laughing, you imp," he said. "What are you doing out here?" She swayed in his grip; tall and vivid and vigorous, with the black curls flying out round her head and her long coat wrapped close by the wind.

"Vous venez trop tard," she cried exultantly. "Eh! Vous venez trop tard!"

"Too late for what?" He felt her flinch in his grip, and he tightened it. "I think you had better find that I've not come too late, my pretty one," he said softly.

She laughed again, flinging her arms up.

"Hear the wind," she cried. "Hear the wind! Dieu! C'est to ride the wind when it comes so. Ah! Vous terrible! Vous si cruelle! Ecoutez moi!" she cried to it, breaking into the deep belling whistle of the moose-call. Dick's eyes changed. For she struck his own wild fibres to a chord of restless passion.

"Speak you little devil," he said, and shook her again. "Who's been here? Ogilvie?"

"Ogilvie! Ogilvie l'ivrogne! Ah! Tant pis pour il if he had."

"I don't doubt it. I fancy it's the worse for anyone who has much to do with you. Who, then? Robison?"

She stood suddenly still.

"Nom de chien," she said pettishly. "How you tease! Oui. Ogilvie did come to the Mission for me, and I sent him home. And Robison did come and I sent him home. And you did come—too late."

"Oh. That's where I was too late, is it? Keep that modest opinion of yourself, Andree. One sees it too seldom these days. And now I'm sending you home. See? Allez. You've no right out at this hour."

She laughed, swaying against the blast; provocative; lawlessly daring.