I drew my hand away from her finger tips, for my own were shaking.  “Madame, what makes you happy?”

She looked down at me with frank seriousness, but her eyes still kept their sweet, strange brightness; she pressed her palms together as she always did when much in earnest.

“Monsieur, is it so strange after all?  Think of the wonder of what I see about me!  The great stars, the dawns, and the strange waters that go no one knows where.  I have lived all my life in courts and have not felt trammeled by them, but now——­ Monsieur, there is a freedom, yes, and a happiness stirring in me that I have not known.  I wonder if you understand?”

I watched the starlight draw elfin lines across her face, and my heart suddenly cried through my tongue words that my brain would have forbidden.

“I understand this at least.  Madame, you talk of happiness.  I am finding happiness at this moment that I never felt at court,—­no, nor in the wilderness till now.”

She did not draw back nor protest, but she looked at me with wistful gravity.

“Monsieur——­ Monsieur”——­

“I am your servant, madame.”

She halted.  “This is a masque, a comedy,” she stumbled.  “This—­this life in the greenwood.  Does it not seem a fantasy?”

“You seem very real to me, madame.”

“Monsieur, I tell you, it is a masque.  Will you not help me play it as such?”

“You treat it as a masque in your own heart, madame?”

She turned her face into the shadow.  “I eat, I sleep, I laugh with the birds, and I play with Singing Arrow.  I do not look ahead.”  She rose.  “Play with me.  Play it is a dream, monsieur.”

I rose and stepped beside her toward her cabin.  “I am a man,” I said, with a short laugh of my own.  “I cannot spin words nor cheat myself.  But I shall not distress you.  Do not fear me, madame.”

But her step lingered.  “You leave us soon?”

“At dawn to-morrow.”

“Monsieur!  And you go”——­

“To the Winnebagoes.  I shall return in a week.”

She clasped her hands behind her as if her white cloak bound her.  “To the Winnebagoes,—­to another tribe of Indians!  Are you sure that they are friendly?  I forget that there are Indians in the forest, since I see none here.  Ah, you must sleep now if you are to rise so early.  Good-night, and—­thank you, monsieur.  Good-night.”  I had hardly bowed to her in turn before her long light step had brought her to her door.

And then I went back to work.  The furs had been sorted, labeled, and cached; the canoe had been dried, and its splints examined and new bales of merchandise had been made up for the trip on the morrow.  But there remained much writing and figuring to be gone over.  It seemed as if I had but closed my eyes when Labarthe touched me on the shoulder and told me it was dawn.