"You are worth any danger I might encounter. But you should at least go back for me."
"I will do anything for you, madame. But why should I go back?—you will not long be there."
"What does that matter? The important thing is that you should not lapse again into the Indian."
"Is any life but the life of an Indian open to me, madame?"
She struck her hands together with a scream.
"Louis! Sire!"
Startled, I dropped the book and it sprawled at her feet like the open missal. She had returned so unexpectedly to the spirit of our first meeting.
"O, if you knew what you are! During my whole life your name has been cherished by my family. We believed you would sometime come to your own. Believe in yourself!"
I seemed almost to remember and perceive what I was—as you see in mirage one inverted boat poised on another, and are not quite sure, and the strange thing is gone.
Perhaps I was less sure of the past because I was so sure of the present. A wisp of brown mist settling among the trees spread cloud behind her. What I wanted was this woman, to hide in the woods for my own. I could feed and clothe her, deck her with necklaces of garnets from the rocks, and wreaths of the delicate sand-wort flower. She said she would rather make Paul a woodchopper than a suppliant, taking the constitutional oath. I could make him a hunter and a fisherman. Game, bass, trout, pickerel, grew for us in abundance. I saw this vision with a single eye; it looked so possible! All the crude imaginings of youth colored the spring woods with vivid beauty. My face betrayed me, and she spoke to me coldly.