my wishes fail.
Unless you tell me you love this Indian, and that seems monstrous to me,
this marriage shall never take place."

"It must, it must," she said, though her face was like marble, where it
had been human before. "M'sieu, what is right must be done. I promised,
and you were saved."

"Of your own free will? Rose," he caught both hands in a pressure that
seemed to draw her soul along with it, "answer me truly."

"Of my will, yes, Monsieur." Her white throat swelled with the anguish
she repressed.

"You have left out the 'free,'" but he knew well why she could not utter
it.

"Monsieur, I think you would be noble enough to give your life for a
friend"--she was about to say "whom you loved," but she caught her voice
in time.

Was this heroic maiden the little girl who had run wild in the old town,
and sung songs with the birds; who had been merry and careless, but
always a sweet human Rose; the child he had taken to his heart long ago,
the girl he had watched over, the woman--yes, the woman he loved with a
man's first fervent passion! She should not go out of his life, now that
God had made a space for her to come in it. Miladi he had given up to
Laurent Giffard, she had never belonged to him in the deep sacredness of
love. And as he watched her, his eyes seeming to look into her soul,
through the motes of light that illumined them, he knew it was not
simply that she had no love for the Indian, but that she loved him. It
seemed the sublime moment of his life, the sweetest consciousness that
he had ever known.

"You gave something greater than life. Listen," and he drew his brows
into a resolute line. "When that man comes we will have it out between
us. For I love you, too. I owe you a great reward that only a life's
devotion can pay. I am much older, but I seem to have just awakened to
the dream of bliss that sanctifies manhood. My darling, if a better man
came, I could give you up, if I went hungering all the rest of my days.
But you shall not go to certain wretchedness. And he must see the truth.
That is the way a man should love."

Her slender, white throat rose and fell like a heartbeat. With Savignon
she would be loved with a fierce passion, for the man's supreme joy;
this man would love for the woman's joy.

"Monsieur, I have studied the subject, and I think it is right. I pray
you, do not disturb my resolve. It has been made after many prayers. If
the good Father should change His mind--but tha