The woman came out and closed the door.
“Poor little fool!” she whispered, “she is worn to a shadow with these weeks of weeping, and, now that he is back, will not give over hanging to his hand like one drowning.”
“Heed not. Is it in your heart, Rette, to do a deed of kindness for me, to keep a word of faith?”
“With all my heart, Ma'amselle!”
“Then,” whispered Maren, apart from the clerk's listening ears, “take you this letter. Keep it until M'sieu the factor is in his right mind, then give it him with your own hands. If he—if he should—burn it, Rette, unopened.”
And she gave into the woman's keeping the only letter she had ever written to a man.
It was in French, and the script was fine and finished.
This was what she had said, alone in the little room with its eastern window at the end of the Baptiste cabin:
“MONSIEUR MCELROY, Factor of Fort de Seviere, ave atque vale.” (The tender word of Father Tenau when he blessed her that last time in Grand Portage)
“The time has come when I must take my people out of your post, must break their contract and their word. Forgive them, M'sieu, and lay not the fault to them, for I, and I only, am to blame. But the time I promised is too long.... I can no longer hold back the tide of longing which drives me to that land of which we spoke once....” (Here there was a break in the letter, a smudge on the page, as if the quill had caught the paper or a drop of moisture run into the ink.)