"We are on the right track, comrade," said I, lightly, steering my course along the shore toward Cobequid.
Her only answer was to fall a-paddling with such an eagerness that I had to check her.
"Now, now," I said, "more haste, less speed."
"But I feel so strong now, and so rested," she cried passionately. "Might we not overtake them to-night?"
"Hardly so soon as that, I fear, Madame," I answered. "This is a stern chase, and it is like to be a long one; you must make up your mind to that, if you would not have a fresh disappointment every hour."
"Oh," she broke out, "if it were your child you were trying to find and save, you would not be so cool about it."
"Believe me, Madame," said I, in a low voice, "I am not perhaps as cool as I appear."
"Oh, what a weak and silly creature I must seem to you!" she cried. "But I will not be weak and silly when it comes to trial, Monsieur, I promise you. I will prove worthy of your confidence. But make allowance for me now, and do not judge me harshly. Every moment I seem to hear him crying for me, Monsieur." And her head drooped forward in unspeakable grief.
I could think of nothing, absolutely nothing, to say. I could only mutter hoarsely, "I do not think you either weak or silly, Madame."
This answer, feeble as it appeared to myself, seemed in a sense to relieve her. She put down her paddle, leaned forward upon the front bar, with her face in her hands, and sobbed gently for a few minutes. Then, while I gazed upon her in rapt commiseration, she all at once resumed the paddle briskly.