gamy, but she
knew not that, even in his best love, a man's heart is never entirely
absorbed, that no Wasi ever belongs wholly to any Ermi, knew not that
this is the tree of woman's crucifixion.

And Wasi endeavoured to comfort her, but she was only silent and
motionless. He told her of the great sun-dance, and of the feastings,
and of how the sisters of the youths had cut little pieces of flesh
from them, but the youths cried not, for they were no weak women.

Then Ermi moved around gently and prepared food for Asa, who wore a
wreath of yellow blossoms wherewith Wasi had crowned her.

Sometimes, as she moved to and fro, she stopped as in a dream to look
at the glowing and beautiful body of her rival. The woman was lithe as
a sapling, her cheeks were like wild red roses, and her mouth was like
to a bow and arrow when it is set. Asa's hair was blue-black, but her
skin was almost white, for her father had been a pale face, one of the
Company's men at Fort Edmonton.

But Ermi neither spoke nor complained, even when she read in Wasi's
eyes strange depths of passion as he looked on the lovely stranger. A
few days agone, she would have torn this woman to pieces, but there was
no rage in her heart now. The world had hardened around her, and she
could not cut through.

And so four moons filled and waned, and darkness and sun passed
unheeded to the stricken Ermi, for the light had gone out of her life,
and from the heavens too.

The women who loved her, and even Asa, tried to break her apathy, but
guessed not that her wound was past all surgery--that her life was a
bitter marah into which no tree of healing could fall.

Some said the sun had kissed her when she carried little Ninon to the
coulee, and others said it was the touch of God, for the world has
always a name for a broken heart.

Once the wife of Tusda told her that Ninon was better off and not
needing her in the least, but this only made Ermi's heart the more dull
and leaden. Wazakoo thought that Ninon might have grown into such a
wicked woman as the bold Asa, but the words were an insult to the
innocent eyes, the little unsullied feet, the lips pure as thought of
God, which the mother's eyes called up.

"Very soon, you will go also," added Taopi, but it bewildered Ermi the
more to know that the little piece of ground on which she stood was
crumbling too.

Another moon waned and yet she served the household. In her brain the
fire still burned on. W