"It—I am not carrying the miniature."
"Did—did the Indians take it from you?"
I stepped nearer. "Madame de Montlivet, what right have I to be carrying another woman's miniature? I shall write the fact of my marriage to Madame Bertheau, and the matter will be closed. No, the Indians did not take the miniature. I buried it in the woods."
"Monsieur, that was not necessary!"
"I thought that it was, madame."
She stood with a chair between us. "Monsieur," she said, with her eyes down, "I wish that I had known. It was not necessary. Did you bury the miniature when you married me?"
I put the chair aside and stood over her. "No, madame, I did not bury the miniature the day we were married. Do you remember the night of the storm, the night when you asked me if I could save you from your cousin? I rose early the next morning and digged a grave for the picture. It is buried deep,—with all that I once thought that it implied. If I confess now that it implied little you must find excuses for me. I—my heart was in the camp in those days. The rest was pastime. I have left pastimes behind, madame."
She would not look at me, yet I felt her change. The flitting, indescribable air of elation that marked her from all women in the world came back. She was again the woman of the forest, the woman who had waked with a song and looked with unhurried pulse into the face of danger. I breathed hard and bent to her, but she kept her eyes away.
"The fair little French face," she murmured. "You should not have put it in the cold earth. You were needlessly cruel, monsieur."
I bent lower. "I was not cruel. I gave her a giant sepulchre. That is over. But I—I shall have another miniature. I know a skilled man in Paris. Some time—some time I mean to have your portrait in your Indian blouse; in your skin blouse with the sun in your hair." My free hand suddenly crept to her shoulder, "May I have it? May I have it, madame?"