De Sancerre met Katonah’s eyes and remained silent for a time. There was something in her glance that chilled him for the moment with an inexplicable foreboding. Annoyed at his weakness, he went on:
“All men loved her, ma petite, and so it was not strange that I— Mais n’importe. Among the braves, Katonah, who followed in her train was a youth with evil eye, a black, soft-footed, proud, and boastful man, to whom her word was sworn.”
“You killed him, then,” said Katonah, with conviction.
De Sancerre started nervously and gazed around him searchingly. There was an uncanny precipitancy in Katonah’s mental methods which affected him unpleasantly.
“Yes,” he acknowledged. “I killed him, Katonah.”
“And the maiden with the raven hair? You carried her away?”
“No, Katonah. I came across the sea and left her there.”
The eyes of the Mohican wore a puzzled expression as she tried to read his face.
“I do not understand,” she murmured, presently.
De Sancerre remained silent for a while. He realized that, with the limited vocabulary at his disposal, he could not make the Indian girl comprehend the exigencies which, in a civilized land, might arise to drive a lover from his loved one’s side. The mind of the savage maiden was unfitted to grasp those finer distinctions which made the habits and customs at Versailles so superior to the methods and manners prevailing among her Mohican kindred. Presently the expatriated courtier said: