"Monsieur!"
"I say, why did you leave me?"
"Monsieur, what else could I do? I would have discredited you. Those were your words. 'A woman would discredit our canoes.'"
"Yet you were—you were a woman all the time."
"Not in your eyes, monsieur."
I gripped her hand. "Did the Indians suspect?"
"Never for a moment."
"Yet when they captured you"—
"I was in man's dress. I—I was trying to defend the blockhouse. The men had—had—had"—
I seized her in my arm, and made her drink from my brandy flask. In a moment the color came back to her lips, and she drew away.