He crossed the room, noting the painting on the table and the colour that climbed to Andree's hair.

"That's pretty," he said, indicating the bud under the slim brown fingers. "He'll be a lucky man who gets those, Andree."

Moosta's English always failed her before these men of the red coats and the direct eyes. She plunged at incoherent explanation; ended in a squeak of Cree despair, and then obeyed Grange's order to bring glasses and a bottle. Grange was proud through every honest inch of him at Dick's presence for the first time in the back-parlour, and he was content to smoke in silence, until his guest chose to remember him again.

"Won't you tell me who they're for, Andree?" said Dick.

Andree looked up; saw his eyes; saw the painting on the table, and flung restraint off in a breath.

"Ah!" she cried. "Say it! Is that like—me?"

"No. You are lovelier than that, Andree. Much lovelier."

"So-o——" It was long-drawn wonder and delight. She looked at him. "When men did call me pretty I did not know it was all that pretty," she said.

Dick bit the smile off on his lips.

"That is why you can hurt us all so much, Andree," he said.

"So-o," she said again, and her hands fell idle on her lap and her big eyes burned as she stared across the room. Dick looked at her with amused comprehension, seeing the vanity which swayed her. And at that moment there was nothing else in Grange's Andree. He took up the moccasin, touching her warm hands as he did it.

"If I paint more pictures of you may I have these?" he said. "I think I don't want you to make them for another fellow."

The scarlet blazed in her olive skin again.

"You paint me over—some more? In my new dress?"

"Perhaps. You finish those moccasins for me?"

Possibly Andree had forgotten that the moccasins were Moosta's. Possibly it would not have affected her if she had remembered. A smile curved her lips.