in this. Life is bitter, but I will live it as long as the Powers
please. I will take what comes. Even among the Indians I was not
tempted to--to that."

"You would have died. Starved here in the wilderness, if I had not
found you."

"Perhaps, monsieur. Yet I gave myself what chance I could. I took
some food, a fishing line, and that knife."

"Why did you leave me?"

"Monsieur!"

"I say, why did you leave me?"

"Monsieur, what else could I do? I would have discredited you. Those
were your words. 'A woman would discredit our canoes.'"

"Yet you were--you were a woman all the time."

"Not in your eyes, monsieur."

I gripped her hand. "Did the Indians suspect?"

"Never for a moment."

"Yet when they captured you"--

"I was in man's dress. I--I was trying to defend the blockhouse. The