"You see, I'm out from Lac Bain to meet Colonel and Mrs.Becker, and--" He hesitated purposely, his white teeth gleaming in the frank smile which made people like him immensely, from the first.
"You've met them," completed the laughing voice from across the fire.
"Please, Mr.Steele, will you forgive me for looking in at you and waking you up?
But your feet looked so terribly funny, and I assure you that was all I could see, though I tried awfully hard.

Anyway, I saw your name printed on the flap of your tent." Steele felt a slow fire burning in his cheeks as he encountered the beautiful eyes glowing at him from behind the colonel.

The woman was smiling at him.

In the heat of the fire she had pushed back her fur turban, and he saw that her hair was the same shining red gold that had come to him in the letter, and that her lips and eyes and the glorious color in her face were remarkably like those of which he had dreamed, and of which waking visions had come with the hyacinth letter to fill him with unrest and homesickness.

In spite of himself he had reasoned that she would be young and that she would have golden hair, but these other things, the laughing beauty of her face, the luring depth of her eyes.
He caught himself staring.
"I--I was dreaming," he almost stammered.