ou are weighted in the pockets. And these are choice. I will
have no one take part in them."

She drew herself aside and began to march with a graceful, vigorous
step, her head proudly poised on the arching neck that, bared to summer
suns and wind, yet was always white. The delicious little hollow, where
the collar bones met, was formed to lay kisses in, and be filled with
warm, throbbing lips. Yes, he was right in coming back to Quebec, she
was more enchanting than the glimpse of her had been.

"Why do you look at me so?" she cried, with a kind of quick repulsion
she did not understand, but it angered her.

"It is the homage we pay to beauty, Mam'selle."

"Your sister is beautiful," she said, with an abruptness that was almost
anger.

"So thought the Sieur de Champlain, and I believe she was not offended
at it."

"I am not like that," she declared decisively. "She was fair as a lily,
and Father Jamay said she had the face of a saint."

"I am not so partial to saints myself. And my brother-in-law would have
been better satisfied, I do believe, if she had been less saintly."

She looked a trifle puzzled.

"It is long since you left France," she commented irrelevantly.

"I was not seventeen. It is six years ago."

"Do you mean to go back?"

"Sometime, Mam'selle. Would you like to go?"

"No," she said decidedly.

"But why not?" amused.

"Because I like Quebec."

"It is a wretched wilderness of a place."

"Madame Destournier talks about France. Why, if Paris is all gayety and
pleasure, are people put in dungeons, and then to death? And there seem
so many rulers. They are not always good to the Sieur, either."

"They do not understand. But these are too weighty matters for a young
head."

"Why do they not want a great, beautiful town here! All they care about
is the furs, and the rough men and Indians spoil the summer. I like to
hear the Sieur tell what might be, houses and castles, and streets,
instead of these crooked, winding paths, and--there are fine shops,
where you buy beautiful things," glancing vaguely at him.

"Why should you not like to go thither then, if you can dream of these
delights?"

"I want the Sieur to have his way, and do some of the things he has set
his heart upon. Miladi would like it too. But I am well enough
satisfied."

She tossed her head in her superb strength. He had not known many women,
and they were older. There was something in her fresh sweetness that
touched h