"I have decided!"

"How?"

"That I will never be your wife."

"And let your lover perish in the flames?"

"Even that were better than to stain my soul, and I can meet him in heaven, as pure as now."

"It will be long before you do so! I shall take care that you do not have an opportunity to lay violent hands upon yourself," and happy that the words would pierce her heart like a knife, "you will be a wife without even the ceremony of marriage. Even the miserable apology the Indians sometimes indulge in shall be denied you."

"Your wife I will never be."

"I swear that you shall."

"And I, before heaven and the holy angels, that I will not. I would dash my brains out against a stone first."

"We will see whose oath is kept. Now I go to complete the means for getting rid of your lover. Then I will come and woo you for the last time."