I bowed, for I did not wish to answer.  Mine was a real marriage to Father Nouvel.  I thought of the look in the priest’s eyes as he made us man and wife, and of the voices of the Indian women as they chanted of life and marriage, and I shut my teeth on a sudden feeling of bitterness.  A man may be counted rich yet know himself to be a pauper.  I never saw Father Nouvel again.  If he were living now I would go far to meet him.

It was a long day’s travel back to Sturgeon Cove, and night had fallen before we wound our passage around the curves of the bay and saw the clear eye of the evening fire burning steadily on the shore.  Our double trip had taken eleven days, and for me the time had lagged.  I had carried an unreasoning weight of oppression, and the shout that I gave at sight of the black figures around the blaze was an outburst of relief.

My company flung themselves at the shore, and all talked at once.

“For three days we have watched,” Singing Arrow scolded.

The woman stood near, and I went to her.  “Have you watched for three days?” I asked, with my lips on her hand.

“Yes,” she said, and then I felt ashamed, for her eyes looked worn and troubled.

“Forgive me, madame,” I murmured, though I scarcely knew for what, and I felt embarrassed and without words.

“I will stay here to-morrow,” I said stupidly, and when she said that she was glad, it did not seem to me that she meant it.  I saw her no more that night.

But with the fresh morning I forgot all chill.  We lingered over a breakfast of broiled bass, and the woman showed me a canoe that Simon had made for her.  Simon was the deft-fingered member of my crew, and he had fashioned a fairy craft.  I saw that it would carry two, and I said to the woman that we would take it, and have a day of idleness together.  I feared she might demur, but she did not.  Indeed, she suddenly laughed out like a child without much reason, and there was that in the sound that satisfied me, until I swore at the men and their blundering to keep down my own joy.

We took materials for lunch and started before the dew was dry.  The woman showed me her new skill with the paddle, and I praised her without care for my conscience.  We went slowly and we talked much.  Yet we talked only of the birds and the woods and the paddling.  Never of ourselves.

At noon we landed in a pocket of an inlet on the south side of the cove toward its mouth.  There was a wonderful meadow there with tiger lilies burning like blood and a giant sycamore leaning to the water.  I cooked a venison steak on hot stones, and we had maize cakes and wild berries and water from a spring.  We sat alone at meat as we had never done.

After lunch the woman sat under the sycamore and I lay at her feet.  I looked up at her till her eyes dropped.

“Madame,” I whispered, “madame, you were vexed with me last night.”