"Monsieur, I must refuse."
He opened his mouth with a look that cursed me, but before the words came he thought twice and changed his front. He spoke calmly. "I am her guardian and her cousin. I was her intended husband. You are a gentleman. I ask you to bring me to my cousin, monsieur."
His tone of calm possession fired me, I remembered what he was, and I enumerated his titles in order.
"Yes. You are the guardian who would have married her for her estates; you are the cousin who played the poltroon and outraged her pride of family; you are the lover who abandoned her,—abandoned her to torture and the tomahawk. Is it strange that it is her wish never to see you? You will spare your pride some hurts if you avoid her in the future, monsieur."
The great face turned yellow to the eyes. "She told you this?"
"I am no mind reader, monsieur."
And then he turned away. I took one glimpse of his face and knew it was not decent to look a second time. He had done a hideous thing, but he was having a hideous punishment. Nature had formed him for a proud man, and he had lived arrogantly, secure of homage. I wondered now that he could live at all.
And so I went to work at the canoe, and waited till he should turn to me. When he did it was with a child's plea for pity, and the abjectness of his tone was horrible, coming from a man of his girth and power.
"You might have done the same thing yourself, monsieur."
I bowed. I could not but toss him that bone of comfort, for it was the truth. Sometimes a spring snaps suddenly in a man, and he becomes a brute. How could I boast that I would be immune?