There was a long pause now, and when next she spoke he could hardly catch her words. "You will come again?"
His heart answered, "My love! O my love!" But he could not speak it. He looked around upon sky, forest, sweeping river—all the landscape of his bliss, the prison of his intolerable shame. A fierce peremptory longing seized him to kill his bliss and his shame at one stroke. Four words would do it. He had but to stand up and cry aloud, "I am an Englishman!" and the whole beautiful hideous dream would crack, shiver, dissolve. Only four words! Almost he heard his voice shouting them and saw through the trembling heat her body droop under the stab, her love take the mortal hurt and die with a face of scorn. Only four words, and an end desirable as death! What kept him silent then? He checked himself on the edge of a horrible laugh. The thing was called Honour: and its service steeped him in dishonour to the soul.
"You will come again?" her eyes repeated.
He commanded himself to say, "It may be that there is now no need to go. If Fort Frontenac has fallen—"
"Why should you believe that Fort Frontenac has fallen?" she broke in; and then, clasping her hands, added in a sort of terror, "Do you know that—that now—I hardly seem able to think about Fort Frontenac, or to care whether it has fallen or not? What wickedness has come to me that I should be so cruelly selfish?"
He set his face. Even to comfort her he must not let his look or voice soften; one touch of weakness now would send him over the abyss.
"Let us go forward," said he. "At the next bend we shall know what has happened."
But around the bend came a procession which told plainly enough what had happened; a procession of boats filled with dark-coated provincial soldiers, a few white-coats, many women and children. No flags flew astern; the very lift of the oars told of disgrace and humiliation. Thus came Payan de Noyan with his garrison, prisoners on parole, sent down by the victorious British to report the fall of Frontenac and be exchanged for prisoners taken at Ticonderoga.
Already the Commandant and his men had surmised the truth, and were hurrying back along the ridge to meet the unhappy procession at the quay. John and Diane turned with them and walked homeward in silence.
The flotilla passed slowly beneath their eyes, but did not head in toward the quay. An old man in the leading boat waved an arm from mid-stream—or rather, lifted it in salutation and let it fall again dejectedly.