With a sudden movement David swung one of the’ big chairs close to her.  “Please sit down,” he commanded.  “I can talk to you better that way.  As an officer of the law it is my duty to ask you a few questions.  It rests in your power to answer all of them or none of them.  I have given you my word not to act until I have seen St. Pierre, and I shall keep that promise.  But when we do meet I shall act largely on the strength of what you tell me during the next tea minutes.  Please sit down!”

X

In that big, deep chair which must have been St. Pierre’s own, Marie-Anne sat facing Carrigan.  Between its great arms her slim little figure seemed diminutive and out of place.  Her brown eyes were level and clear, waiting.  They were not warm or nervous, but so coolly and calmly beautiful that they disturbed Carrigan.  She raised her hands, her slim fingers crumpling for a moment in the soft, thick coils of her hair.  That little movement, the unconscious feminism of it, the way she folded her hands in her lap afterward, disturbed Carrigan even more.  What a glory on earth it must be to possess a woman like that!  The thought made him uneasy.  And she sat waiting, a vivid, softly-breathing question-mark against the warm coloring of the upholstered chair.

“When you shot me,” he began, “I saw you, first, standing over me.  I thought you had come to finish me.  It was then that I saw something in your face—­horror, amazement, as though you had done something you did not know you were doing.  You see, I want to be charitable.  I want to understand.  I want to excuse you if I can.  Won’t you tell me why you shot me, and why that change came over you when you saw me lying there?”

“No, M’sieu David, I shall not tell.”  She was not antagonistic or defiant.  Her voice was not raised, nor did it betray an unusual emotion.  It was simply decisive, and the unflinching steadiness of her eyes and the way in which she sat with her hands folded gave to it an unqualified definiteness.

“You mean that I must make my own guess?”

She nodded.

“Or get it out of St. Pierre?”

“If St. Pierre wishes to tell you, yes.”

“Well—­” He leaned a little toward her.  “After that you dragged me up into the shade, dressed my wound and made me comfortable.  In a hazy sort of way I knew what was going on.  And a curious thing happened.  At times—­” he leaned still a little nearer to her—­“at times—­there seemed to be two of you!”

He was not looking at her hands, or he would have seen her fingers slowly tighten in her lap.

“You were badly hurt,” she said.  “It is not strange that you should have imagined things, M’sieu David.”

“And I seemed to hear two voices,” he went on.

She made no answer, but continued to look at him steadily.

“And the other had hair that was like copper and gold fire in the sun.  I would see your face and then hers, again and again—­and—­ since then—­I have thought I was a heavy load for your hands to drag up through that sand to the shade alone.”