My master hobbled to see her.  And I began to think about her day and night, as I had thought about my books; an isolated little girl in her early teens, mother and widow, facing a future like a dead wall, with daily narrowing fortunes.  The seclusion in which she lived made her sacred like a religious person.  I did not know what love was, and I never intended to dote, like my poor master.  Before the end of January, however, such a change worked in me that I was as fierce for the vital world as I had been for the world of books.

VII

A trick of the eyes, a sweet turning of the mouth corners, the very color of the hair—­some irresistible physical trait, may compel a preference in us that we cannot control; especially when we first notice these traits in a woman.  My crying need grew to be the presence of Madame de Ferrier.  It was youth calling to youth in that gorgeous winter desert.

Her windows were hoar-frost furred without and curtained within.  Though I knew where they were I got nothing by tramping past and glancing up.  I used to saunter through the corridor that led to her rooms, startled yet pleased if Ernestine came out on an errand.  Then I would close my book and nod, and she would courtesy.

“Oh, by the way,” I would turn to remark, “I was passing, and thought I would knock and ask how Madame de Ferrier is to-day.  But you can tell me.”

When assured of Madame de Ferrier’s health I would continue: 

“And Paul—­how is Paul?”

Paul carried himself marvelously.  He was learning to walk.  Ernestine believed the lie about knocking, and I felt bolder every time I told it.

The Indian part of me thought of going hunting and laying slaughtered game at their door.  But it was a doubtful way of pleasing, and the bears hibernated, and the deer were perhaps a day’s journey in the white wastes.

I used to sing in the clear sharp air when I took to the frozen lake and saw those heights around me.  I look back upon that winter, across what befell me afterwards, as a time of perfect peace; before virgin snows melted, when the world was a white expanse of innocence.

Our weather-besieged manor was the center of it.  Vaguely I knew there was life on the other side of great seas, and that New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and New Orleans were cities in which men moved and had their being.  My country, the United States, had bought from Napoleon Bonaparte a large western tract called Louisiana, which belonged to France.  A new state named Ohio was the last added to the roll of commonwealths.  Newspapers, which the Indian runner once or twice brought us from Albany, chronicled the doings of Aaron Burr, Vice-President of the United States, who had recently drawn much condemnation on himself by a brutal duel.

“Aaron Burr was here once,” said my master.

“What is he like?” I inquired.