It was as if the past focused itself to one flaming point, and the flash of that point illumined life, as deity must feel to whom past and present and future are one.

And all the while, with temples pounding like surf on rock and the roar of the sea in my ears, I was not thinking, only knowing that Hortense was standing in the blue-shafted light with tremulous lips and white face and a radiance on her brow not of this life.

Her hands ran lightly over imaginary keys.  The blue flame darted and quivered through the gloom.  The hushed purr of the spring broke the stillness in metallic tinklings.  A smile flitted across the sleeper’s face.  Her lips parted.  The crackle of the flame seemed loud as tick of clock in death-room.

“To get the memory of it,” she said.

And there stole out of the past mocking memories of that last night in the hunting-room, filling the cave with tuneless melodies like thoughts creeping into thoughts or odour of flowers in dark.

But what was she saying in her sleep?

“Blind gods of chance”—­the words that had haunted my delirium, then quick-spoken snatches too low for me to hear—­“no-no”—­then more that was incoherent, and she was gliding back to the cave.

She had lifted the curtain door—­she was whispering—­she paused as if for answer-then with face alight, “The stars fight for us—­” she said; and she had disappeared.

The flame set the shadows flickering.  The rivulet gurgled loud in the dark.  And I came from concealment as from a spirit world.

Then Hortense was no dream, and love was no phantom, and God—­was what?

There I halted.  The powers of darkness yet pressed too close for me to see through to the God that was love.  I only knew that He who throned the universe was neither the fool that ignorant bigots painted, nor the blind power, making wanton war of storm and dark and cold.  For had not the blind forces brought Hortense to me, and me to Hortense?

Consciousness was leaping from summit to summit like the forked lightnings, and the light that burned was the light that transfigures life for each soul.

The spell of a presence was there.

Then it came home to me what a desperate game the French doctor had played.  That sword-thrust in the dark meant death; so did the attack on Ben Gillam’s fort; and was it not Le Borgne, M. Picot’s Indian ally, who had counselled the massacre of the sleeping tribe?  You must not think that M. Picot was worse than other traders of those days!  The north is a desolate land, and though blood cry aloud from stones, there is no man to hear.

I easily guessed that M. Picot would try to keep me with him till M. Radisson had sailed.  Then I must needs lock hands with piracy.

Hortense and I were pawns in the game.

At one moment I upbraided him for bringing Hortense to this wilderness of murder and pillage.  At another I considered that a banished gentleman could not choose his goings.  How could I stay with M. Picot and desert M. de Radisson?  How could I go to M. de Radisson and abandon Hortense?