ill tell you everything. You are my mother, and I love you; but
you will not see the truth. When my father took you from the lodges and
brought you here, it was the end of the Indian life. It was for you to
go on with him, but you would not go. I was young, but I saw, and I said
that in all things I would go with him. I did not know that it would be
hard, but at school, at the very first, I began to understand. There was
only one, a French girl--I loved her--a girl who said to me, 'You are
as white as I am, as anyone, and your heart is the same, and you are
beautiful.' Yes, Manette said I was beautiful."

She paused a moment, a misty, far-away look came into her eyes, her
fingers clasped and unclasped, and she added:

"And her brother, Julien,--he was older,--when he came to visit Manette,
he spoke to me as though I was all white, and was good to me. I have
never forgotten, never. It was five years ago, but I remember him. He
was tall and strong, and as good as Manette--as good as Manette. I loved
Manette, but she suffered for me, for I was not like the others, and my
ways were different--then. I had lived up there on the Warais among the
lodges, and I had not seen things--only from my father, and he did so
much in an Indian way. So I was sick at heart, and sometimes I wanted to
die; and once--But there was Manette, and she would laugh and sing, and
we would play together, and I would speak French and she would speak
English, and I learned from her to forget the Indian ways. What were
they to me? I had loved them when I was of them, but I came on to a
better life. The Indian life is to the white life as the parfleche pouch
to--to this." She laid her hand upon a purse of delicate silver mesh
hanging at her waist. "When your eyes are opened you must go on, you
cannot stop. There is no going back. When you have read of all there
is in the white man's world, when you have seen, then there is no
returning. You may end it all, if you wish, in the snow, in the river,
but there is no returning. The lodge of a chief--ah, if my father had
heard you say that--!"

The Indian woman shifted heavily in her chair, then shrank away from
the look fixed on her. Once or twice she made as if she would speak, but
sank down in the great chair, helpless and dismayed.

"The lodge of a chief!" the girl continued in a low, bitter voice. "What
is the lodge of a chief? A smoky fire, a pot, a bed of skins, aih-yi! If
the lodges of the Indians wer