re often," I
ventured at last, for the dead silence weighed upon me. "You have
never seemed to me like one who would seek such loneliness."

"I am one whom very few wholly comprehend, I fear, and surely not upon
first acquaintance," she answered thoughtfully, "for I am full of
strange moods, and perhaps dream more than other girls. This may have
been born of my early convent training, and the mystic tales of the
nuns; nor has it been lessened by the loneliness of the frontier. So,
if I differ from other young women, you may know 't is my training, as
well as my nature, that may account for it. I have led a strange life,
Monsieur, and one that has known much of sadness. There are times when
I seek my own thoughts, and find liking for no other company. Then I
come here, and in some way the loneliness of water and plain soothe me
as human speech cannot. I used to love to stand yonder by the eastern
wall and gaze out over the Great Lake, watching the green surges chase
each other until they burst in spray along the beach. But since I went
adrift in the little boat, and felt the cruelty of the water, I have
shrunk from looking out upon it. Monsieur, have you never known how
restful it sometimes is to be alone?"

"My life has mostly been a solitary one," I answered, responding
unconsciously to her mood, and, in doing so, forgetting my
embarrassment. "It is the birthright of all children of the frontier.
Indeed, I have seen so little of the great world and so much of the
woods, that I scarcely realize what companionship means, especially
that of my own age. I have made many a solitary camp leagues from the
nearest settlement, and have tracked the forest alone for days
together, so content with my own thought that possibly I understand
your meaning better than if my life had been passed among crowds."

"Ah! but I like the crowds," she exclaimed hastily, "and the glow and
excitement of that brighter, fuller life, where people really live. It
is so dull here,--the same commonplace faces, the tiresome routine of
drill, the same blue sky, gray water, and green plains, to look upon
day after day. Oh, but it is all so wearisome, and you cannot conceive
how I have longed again for Montreal and the many little gaieties that
brighten a woman's world. There are those here who have never known
these happier things; their whole horizon of experience has been
bounded by garrison palisades; but 't is not so with me,--I tasted