“M’sieu—­Duval!”

Marie’s eyes, looking down at him, became all at once great pools of glowing light.  Her lips parted.  She leaned toward him, her slim hands clasped suddenly to her breast.

“M’sieu Duval—­who nursed him through the smallpox?” she cried, her voice trembling.  “M’sieu Duval—­who saved my Jan’s life!”

Blake had looked up his facts at headquarters.  He knew what Duval, the Barren Land trapper, had once upon a time done for Jan.

“Yes; I am John Duval,” said.  “And so—­you see—­I am sorry that Jan is away.”

“But he is coming back soon—­in a few days,” exclaimed Marie.  “You shall stay, m’sieu!  You will wait for him?  Yes?”

“This leg—­” began Blake.  He cut himself short with a grimace.  “Yes, I’ll stay.  I guess I’ll have to.”

Marie had changed at the mention of Duval’s name.  With the glow in her eyes had come a flush into her cheeks, and Blake could see the strange little quiver at her throat as she looked at him.  But she did not see Blake so much as what lay beyond him—­Duval’s lonely cabin away up on the edge of the Great Barren, the hours of darkness and agony through which Jan had passed, and the magnificent comradeship of this man who had now dragged himself to their own cabin, half dead.

Many times Jan had told her the story of that terrible winter when Duval had nursed him like a woman, and had almost given up his life as a sacrifice.  And this—­this—­was Duval?  She bent over him again as he lay on the cot, her eyes shining like stars in the growing dusk.  In that dusk she was unconscious of the fact that his fingers had found a long tress of her hair and were clutching it passionately.  Remembering Duval as Jan had enshrined him in her heart, she said: 

“I have prayed many times that the great God might thank you, m’sieu.”

He raised a hand.  For an instant it touched her soft, warm cheek and caressed her hair.  Marie did not shrink—­yes, that would have been an insult.  Even Jan would have said that.  For was not this Duval, to whom she owed all the happiness in her life—­Duval, more than brother to Jan Thoreau, her husband?

“And you—­are Marie?” said Blake.

“Yes, m’sieu, I am Marie.”

A joyous note trembled in her voice as she drew back from the cot.  He could hear her swiftly braiding her hair before she struck a match to light the oil lamp hanging from the ceiling.  After that, through partly closed eyes, he watched her as she prepared their supper.  Occasionally, when she turned toward him as if to speak, he feigned a desire to sleep.  It was a catlike watchfulness, filled with his old cunning.  In his face there was no sign to betray its hideous significance.  Outwardly he had regained his iron-like impassiveness; but in his body and his brain every nerve and fiber was consumed by a monstrous desire—­a desire for this woman, the murderer’s wife.  It was as strange and as sudden as the death that had come to Francois Breault.