red, yet my tongue replied to him
courteously, and I could not but admit the perfection of his attitude.
He deplored the necessity that took his cousin from me; he, and all of
his people, labored under great indebtedness to me. He was dignified,
direct of thought and speech. The man whom I had seen by the dead
ashes of the camp fire; the man who had held my wife's miniature, and
taunted me with what it meant,--that man was gone. This was an elder
brother, a grave elder brother, chastened by suffering.

The woman closed the scene. "I am prepared to go with you," she told
him. "I shall wait here till the canoes are ready. Will you leave me
with my husband?"

She had never before said "husband" in my hearing. As soon as the door
clicked behind Starling I went to her. I knelt and laid my cheek on
her hand.

"You are going to stay with me, Mary. You are my wife. You cannot
escape that. It is fundamental. Patriotism is a man-made feeling.
You are going to stay with me. I am going now to tell Cadillac."

But I could feel her tremble. "If you say more, I must leave you. You
cannot alter my mind. What has come must come. Can we not sit
together in silence till I go?"

And so I sat beside her. "You are a strange woman," I said at length.

She looked at me as if to plead her own cause. "Strange events have
made me. I cannot marvel if you are bitter, for I have brought you
unhappiness. Yet it was in this room that I asked you to remember that
I went with you against my will."

"I remember."

"And will you remember what--what I have seen? Is it strange that I
understand; that I know we must part?"

I shook my head. "It is your cousin's mind impressed on yours that
tells you that we must part,--that and your unfathomable spirit,--the
spirit that carried you in man's dress through those weeks as a
captive. It is that same spirit that will bring you back to me some
day."

"Monsieur!"

"That will bring you back."

"Monsieur, no. I cannot change myself."

"Would I have you change? Mary, Mary! I took you as a boy with me to
the wilderness because you had an unbreakable will and a fanatic's
courage. Yet this is not the end. It is not the end."

She did not answer, and again she laid her head on the table. We had
but a few minutes left now. I saw her look up at me twice before I
heard her whisper, "Monsieur, you said that I loved you. But you never
said that you"----

"Would it change you