"I shall remain to pay Kedsty the price which he will
ask for what has happened tonight."

"Good God!" he cried. "Marette!"

She turned on him swiftly. "No, no, I don't mean that he will hurt me,"
she cried, a fierce little note in her voice. "I would kill him before
that! I'm sorry I told you. But you must not question me. You shall
not!"

She was trembling. He had never seen her excited like that before, and
as she stood there before him, he knew that he was not afraid for her
in the way that had flashed into his mind. She had not spoken empty
words. She would fight. She would kill, if it was necessary to kill.
And he saw her, all at once, as he had not seen her before. He
remembered a painting which he had seen a long time ago in Montreal. It
was _L'Esprit de la Solitude_--The Spirit of the Wild--painted by Conne,
the picturesque French-Canadian friend of Lord Strathcona and Mount
Royal, and a genius of the far backwoods who had drawn his inspiration
from the heart of the wilderness itself. And that painting stood before
him now in flesh and blood, its crudeness gone, but the marvelous
spirit it had breathed remaining. Shrouded in her tumbled hair, her
lips a little parted, every line of her slender body vibrant with an
emotion which seemed consuming her, her beautiful eyes aglow with its
fire, he saw in her, as Conne must have seen at another time, the soul
of the great North itself. She seemed to him to breathe of the God's
country far down the Three Rivers; of its almost savage fearlessness;
its beauty, its sunshine, and its storm; its tragedy, its pathos, and
its song. In her was the courage and the glory of that North. He had
seen; and now he felt these things, and the thrill of them swept over
him like an inundation.

He had heard her soft laugh, she had made fun of him when he thought he
was dying; she had kissed him, she had fought for him, she had clung in
terror to his hand when the lightning flashed; and now she stood with
her little hands clenched in her hair, like a storm about to break. A
moment ago she was so near that he had almost taken her in his arms.
Now, in an instant, she had placed something so vast between them that
he would not have dared to touch her hand or her hair. Like sun and
cloud and wind she changed, and for him each change added to the wonder
of her. And now it was storm. He saw it in her eyes, her hands, her
body. He felt the electrical nearness of it in those low-spoken,
trem