“But more and more I learned that it was no box of wood, but a living thing. For I began to see that it had the shape of a woman. Its neck was very slender; its head was small; and its hair fell in four little braids across its neck and breast down to its hips. And the more I learned, the more my breast ached; for he loved Vylin, and her voice was sweeter for singing than my voice. And I thought much of how she sang for him alone. And I said, ‘She does not sing for me—only for him does she sing; therefore she loves him well.’
“When the grass came again and the ice broke up, my man came back with the furs and the dogs and the men. They came floating down the river on big canoes. And I sang when he came again into his lodge, for the winter had been long. Also, I showed him how kind I had been to Vylin; I thought he would be very glad. But he frowned and spoke sharp words. He said it was wrong to wash Vylin. My breast ached; I could not understand. Does not a good mother wash her _zhinga zhinga_, that it may be clean and of a good smell? I had no _zhinga zhinga_ then, and so I had been a mother to Vylin.
“And when I told him this, he laughed a very harsh laugh, and said it was Vylin, not a _zhinga zhinga_; so that I was sad until he spoke a very soft word, then I forgot for many days.
“But as the grass grew taller and the scent of green things blew in every wind, my man grew strange toward me. Like a man with the ache for home he was. And more and more it became his mood to be very silent while he made Vylin sing to him—O such strange, soft songs, like spirits weeping!
“And more and more my heart grew sore toward Vylin, for when I sang that he might forget her to look upon me, he frowned and spoke sharp words.
“So one day as he sat in a shady place, making songs with his fingers, I said to him: ‘If so softly you should lay your fingers upon _my_ neck, I too could sing as sweetly!’ And he smiled, and it was like the sun breaking through a cloud that has hung long over the day. And he drew me close to him and said: ‘Do you see the leaves upon this tree, and do you know how many?’ And I laughed, for I was glad, and in the old days it had often been his wish to joke so. But he said: ‘So many of the palefaces have listened to me making Vylin sing; and they wept to hear. But now am I far away and strange peoples are about me.’