Annie's Boy

But it was thoughts of Helen that always gave his misery its crowning touch. She pitied him, no doubt, because, she was kind, but in her heart he felt she must despise him for a weakling--a braggart who could not make good his boasts. She needed him, too,--he was sure of it--and lack of money made him as helpless to aid her as though he were serving a jail sentence. When, in the night, his mind began running along this line he could no longer stay in his bunk; and not once, but many times, he got up and dressed and went outside, stumbling around in the brush, over the rocks--anything to change his thoughts.

He tried his utmost to put her out of his mind, yet as he plodded on his snow-shoes, along his fifteen-mile trap line, either actively or subconsciously his thoughts were of her. He could no longer imagine himself feeling anything more than a mild interest in any other woman. He loved her with the same concentration of affection that he had loved his mother.

Bruce had formed the habit of wondering what she would think of this and that--of imagining how she would look--what she would say--and so all through the summer she had been associated with the work. He had anticipated the time when he should be showing her the rapids with the moonlight shining on the foam, the pink and amber sunsets behind the umbrella tree, and when the wind blew among the pines of listening with her to the sounds that were like Hawaiian music in the distance.