moments, unaware of Pierre's presence. But presently she saw him leaning
against the tree, and she started as from a spirit.

"Monsieur!" she said--"Pierre!" and stepped forward again from the
doorway.

He came to her, and "Ah, p'tite Lucille," he said, "you remember me,
eh?--and yet so many years ago!"

"But you remember me," she answered, "and I have changed so much!"

"It is the man who should remember, the woman may forget if she will."

Pierre did not mean to pay a compliment; he was merely thinking.

She made a little gesture of deprecation. "I was a child," she said.

Pierre lifted a shoulder slightly. "What matter? It is sex that I mean.
What difference to me--five, or forty, or ninety? It is all sex. It is
only lovers, the hunters of fire-flies, that think of age--mais oui!"

She had a way of looking at you before she spoke, as though she were
trying to find what she actually thought. She was one after Pierre's own
heart, and he knew it; but just here he wondered where all that ancient
coquetry was gone, for there were no traces of it left; she was steady
of eye, reposeful, rich in form and face, and yet not occupied with
herself. He had only seen her for a minute or so, yet he was sure that
what she was just now she was always, or nearly so, for the habits of
a life leave their mark, and show through every phase of emotion and
incident whether it be light or grave.

"I think I understand you," she said. "I think I always did a little,
from the time you stayed with Grah the idiot at Fort o' God, and fought
the Indians when the others left. Only--men said bad things of you, and
my father did not like you, and you spoke so little to me ever. Yet I
mind how you used to sit and watch me, and I also mind when you rode the
man down who stole my pony, and brought them both back."

Pierre smiled--he was pleased at this. "Ah, my young friend," he said,
"I do not forget that either, for though he had shaved my ear with
a bullet, you would not have him handed over to the Riders of the
Plains--such a tender heart!"

Her eyes suddenly grew wide. She was childlike in her amazement, indeed,
childlike in all ways, for she was very sincere. It was her great
advantage to live where nothing was required of her but truth, she had
not suffered that sickness, social artifice.

"I never knew," she said, "that he had shot at you--never! You did not
tell that."

"There is a time for everything--the time for that was not