“We shall need your help, Mademoiselle. Anything in your bale that would please the chiefs must be used.”
She was puzzled.
“It is the custom,” continued the priest, “at every council. To the Indians a promise is not given, a statement is not true, a treaty is not binding, unless there is a present for each clause. We have much at stake, and we must give what we have.”
“Certainly, Father.”
She stepped back into the darkness, and they could hear her dragging the bundle. Menard sprang to help. 209
“Mademoiselle, where are you?”
“Here, M’sieu.”
He walked toward the sound with his hands spread before him. One hand rested on her shoulder, where she stooped over the bale. She did not shrink from his touch. For a moment he stood, struggling with a mad impulse to take her slender figure in his arms, to hold her where a thousand Indians could not harm her save by taking his own strong life; to tell her what made this moment more to him than all the stern years of the past. It may be that she understood, for she was motionless, almost breathless. But in a moment he was himself.
“I will take it,” he said.
He stooped, took up the bundle, and carried it outside. She followed to the doorway.