mmoning storm. I found
the woman's hand, and lay with it in mine.

She remembered me again after a time. "Does it call to you?" she cried.

I could feel the blood racing in her palm. "As it does to you," I
answered, and I lay still, and let the storm riot in me, and around me,
with her hand held close.

We could not speak for some time. The thunder was constant, and the
play of the lightning was like the dazzle of a fencer's sword. Mingled
with the thunder came the slap of frothing water and the whine of
bending trees. The wind was ice to the cheeks.

At the first lull the woman turned to me. "If you had followed my
wishes we should have been drowned."

I nodded. I had no wish to speak. The storm in me was not lessening.
I kept the woman's hand and was swept on by the tempest.

And the woman, too, lay silent. I saw her look at me once, and look
away. And then, because I could think more coherently, it came to me
that she had changed. The change had come since she had read
Cadillac's letter. She had said nothing, but she was different. What
did it mean? Was she natural at last because she thought succor was
near? I was not ready to know. The moments that I had now were mine.
Ten minutes later they might, if she decreed, belong to Benjamin
Starling.

The storm passed as swiftly as the shifting of a tableau. The rain
stopped, not lingeringly, but as if a key had been turned, and cracks
came in the clouds like clefts in black ice and showed the blue beyond.
In five minutes the sun was shining. We all crept out from under trees
and canoes, and shook ourselves like drenched fowls.

It was magic the way the world changed. The wind died, and the sun
shone low and yellow, and a robin began to sing. The water was still
white and fretting, and the sand was strewn with torn leaves, but
otherwise there was peace. I told Pierre to take one of the men and
find dry fuel for a fire, and Labarthe to take the other and attend to
gumming the canoes. Then I went to the woman, who had slipped dry and
red-cheeked from her wrappings, and was walking in the sun.

"Well, Madame Montlivet," I said, with a bow, "what shall we do about
Monsieur Cadillac's letter?"

There was laughter in my voice, and it confused her. "What shall we
do?" she echoed doubtfully. "Did you mean to say 'we'?"

I bowed again. "'We' assuredly. It must be a joint decision. Come,
it is for you to declare your mind. Do we seek Lord St