much hilarity in the family room drew the Pawnee
servants. I saw their small dark eyes in a mere line of open door,
gazing solemnly.

When the turkey was relieved from his pouching and sent to bed, Pierre
Grignon took his violin. The girls answered with jigs that ended a reel,
when couples left the general figure to jig it off.

When Eagle had watched them awhile she started up, spread her skirts in
a sweeping courtesy, and began to dance a gavotte. The fiddler changed
his tune, and the girls rested and watched her. Alternately swift and
languid, with the changes of the movement, she saluted backward to the
floor, or spun on the tips of rapid feet. I had seen her dance many
times, but never with such abandon of joy.

Our singular relationship was established in the house, where
hospitality made room and apology for all human weakness.

Nobody of that region, except the infirm, stayed indoors to shiver by a
fire. Eagle and the girls in their warm capotes breasted with me the
coldest winter days. She was as happy as they were; her cheeks tingled
as pink as theirs. Sometimes I thought her eyes must answer me with her
old self-command; their bright grayness was so natural.

I believed if her delusions were humored, they would unwind from her
like the cloud which she felt them to be. The family had long fallen
into the habit of treating her as a child, playing some imaginary
character. She seemed less demented than walking in a dream, her
faculties asleep. It was somnambulism rather than madness. She had not
the expression of insane people, the shifty eyes, the cunning and
perverseness, the animal and torpid presence.

If I called her Madame de Ferrier instead of my Cloud-Mother, a strained
and puzzled look replaced her usual satisfaction. I did not often use
the name, nor did I try to make her repeat my own. It was my daily
effort to fall in with her happiness, for if she saw any anxiety she was
quick to plead:

"Don't you like me any more, Paul? Are you tired of me, because I am a
Cloud-Mother?"

"No," I would answer. "Lazarre will never be tired of you."

"Do you think I am growing smaller? Will you love me if I shrink to a
baby?"

"I will love you."

"I used to love you when you were so tiny, Paul, before you knew how to
love me back. If I forget how"--she clutched the lapels of my
coat--"will you leave me then?"

"Eagle, say this: 'Lazarre cannot leave me.'"

"Lazarre cannot leave me."

I heard her r