“You may tell me, ma cheri,” he encouraged, barely above a whisper.  “I am Duval.  And Jan—­I love Jan.”

He drew her back toward the cot, dragging his limb painfully, and seated her again upon the stool.  He sat beside her, still holding her hand, patting it, encouraging her.  The color was coming back into Marie’s cheeks.  Her lips were growing full and red again, and suddenly she gave a trembling little laugh as she looked up into Blake’s face.  His presence began to dispel the terror that had possessed her all at once.

“Tell me, Marie.”

He saw the shudder that passed through her slim shoulders.

“They had a fight—­here—­in this cabin—­three days ago,” she confessed.  “It must have been—­the day—­he was killed.”

Blake knew the wild thought that was in her heart as she watched him.  The muscles of his jaws tightened.  His shoulders grew tense.  He looked over her head as if he, too, saw something beyond the cabin walls.  It was Marie’s hand that gripped his now, and her voice, panting almost, was filled with an agonized protest.

“No, no, no—­it was not Jan,” she moaned.  “It was not Jan who killed him!”

“Hush!” said Blake.

He looked about him as if there was a chance that someone might hear the fatal words she had spoken.  It was a splendid bit of acting, almost unconscious, and tremendously effective.  The expression in his face stabbed to her heart like a cold knife.  Convulsively her fingers clutched more tightly at his hands.  He might as well have spoken the words:  “It was Jan, then, who killed Francois Breault!”

Instead of that he said: 

“You must tell me everything, Marie.  How did it happen?  Why did they fight?  And why has Jan gone away so soon after the killing?  For Jan’s sake, you must tell me—­everything.”

He waited.  It seemed to him that he could hear the fighting struggle in Marie’s breast.  Then she began, brokenly, a little at a time, now and then barely whispering the story.  It was a woman’s story, and she told it like a woman, from the beginning.  Perhaps at one time the rivalry between Jan Thoreau and Francois Breault, and their struggle for her love, had made her heart beat faster and her cheeks flush warm with a woman’s pride of conquest, even though she had loved one and had hated the other.  None of that pride was in her voice now, except when she spoke of Jan.

“Yes—­like that—­children together—­we grew up,” she confided.  “It was down there at Wollaston Post, in the heart of the big forests, and when I was a baby it was Jan who carried me about on his shoulders.  Oui, even then he played the violin.  I loved it.  I loved Jan—­always.  Later, when I was seventeen, Francois Breault came.”

She was trembling.

“Jan has told me a little about those days,” lied Blake.  “Tell me the rest, Marie.”