But the drum's note had recalled her to what lay outside the tent walls. She sighed a little and bent to me as I sat at her feet.
"Do not make up your mind yet," she begged with a curious, tender reluctance. "Let me tell you something first."
I pressed her hand between my own. "I cannot listen. I can only feel.
Tell me, when did you love me first?"
She raised her hand to hide a tide of color. "Monsieur, it is my shame," she cried, with a little half sob of exultance. "It is my shame, but I will tell you. The night—the night that we were married, I lay awake for hours beset by jealousy of the woman of the miniature. Oh, I am indeed shamed! But how could I help it? Your walk, your laugh, your way of carrying your head! How could I keep from loving you? But I fought it. I fought it. I knew we had to part. I went to sleep every night with that thought uppermost."
I took the hand I held, and quieted its trembling against my lips. "You are my wife," I said. "We shall never part. We shall live together till we are very old." The marvel of my own words awed me.
But she begged me to hear her out. "I must speak of the past," she went on. "It leads to what I would have you say to the commandant. Will you listen?"
"I will try."
"Then—then let me speak of the day we parted. I saw that I had to leave you. I knew—I thought I knew—that country was more sacred than individual happiness. But I was weaker than I thought. When I saw Michillimackinac fade, when I knew that I should never see you again, my life seemed to stop. I begged my cousin to take me back. I—I begged till I fainted."
I could not keep my hands from clenching. "And he refused you?" I asked with my lips dry, and I knew that my voice showed hate of a man who was dead.
She did not answer my question, and when she did not defend him I knew that he had been hard to her. "I must have remained unconscious a long time," she hurried on, "for when I came to myself again the country was different and the sun was low. I was exhausted, and I could not think as I had done. You had said that patriotism was a man-made feeling, and I repeated your words over and over. It was all I could seem to remember. I could not see why our parting had been necessary. I wonder if you can understand. It was as if I had been reborn into a new set of beliefs. All that had seemed inevitable and great had grown trivial. I could not see distinctions as I had. God made us—English, French, Indians. I could not understand what patriotism stood for, after all. I did not know what had come upon my mind, but I saw that words that I had thought worth sacrificing life for had lost their meaning. And so—and so—— You see what I would say. I have changed. If you wish to lead the tribes you are not to think of me."