He was silent for a moment, and then said, "I've seen her a good many times when I was asleep."
"Do you still see her?"
"I did two nights ago."
"Is she pretty?"
"Yes."
"So is mine." She folded her hands in her lap and added quietly: "Out there is where my mother and father were drowned. Uncle Pierre tied me to his back and brought me ashore."
Then she told him the story of the wreck of the sailing ship, and how Aunt Josette and Marie Antoinette and Father Albanel and all the people of Five Fingers said it was a miracle that even one should come ashore alive. And she was that one.
"Father Albanel sometimes comes down here with me," she said. "I love him. He always tells me about Nepise. Isn't that a pretty name, Peter? It means Willow Bud. But after she died and her spirit came back with the torch they called her Suskuwao, which means the Torch-Bearer. I love her, too. Do you?"
Peter nodded. "I was thinking of you," he said desperately, trying to get the choking thought out of him. "Father Albanel was looking at you when he told about the Indian girl. That's what you've been to me since I come—a—a sort of torch-bearer, like he said she was. I dunno what I'd have done if it hadn't been for you."
It was out, and for a moment or two the suffocating realization of what he had said made it difficult for him to breathe easily. Mona did not look at him. Her shining eyes were fixed steadily upon the vastness of the lake.