She ran to the wall and took down the banner of St. Pierre Boulain.  “St. Pierre is behind us,” she explained.  “He is coming down with a raft of timber such as we can not get in our country, and we are waiting for him.  But each day we must float down with the stream a few miles nearer the homes of my people.  It makes them happier, even though it is but a few miles.  They are coming now for my bateau.  We shall travel slowly, and it will be wonderful on a day like this.  It will do you good to come outside, M’sieu David—­with me.  Would you care for that?  Or would you rather be alone?”

In her face there was no longer the old restraint.  On her lips was the witchery of a half-smile; in her eyes a glow that flamed the blood in his veins.  It was not a flash of coquetry.  It was something deeper and warmer than that, something real—­a new Marie-Anne Boulain telling him plainly that she wanted him to come.  He did not know that his hands were still clenched at his side.  Perhaps she knew.  But her eyes did not leave his face, eyes that were repeating the invitation of her lips, openly asking him not to refuse.

“I shall be happy to come,” he said.

The words fell out of him numbly.  He scarcely heard them or knew what he was saying, yet he was conscious of the unnatural note in his voice.  He did not know he was betraying himself beyond that, did not see the deepening of the wild-rose flush in the cheeks of St. Pierre’s wife.  He picked up his pipe from the table and moved to accompany her.

“You must wait a little while,” she said, and her hand rested for an instant upon his arm.  Its touch was as light as the touch of his lips had been against her shining hair, but he felt it in every nerve of his body.  “Nepapinas is making a special lotion for your hurt.  I will send him in, and then you may come.”

The wild chant of the rivermen was near as she turned to the door.  From it she looked back at him swiftly.

“They are happy, M’sieu David,” she repeated softly.  “And I, too, am happy.  I am no longer afraid.  And the world is beautiful again.  Can you guess why?  It is because you have given me your promise, M’sieu David, and because I believe you!”

And then she was gone.

For many minutes he did not move.  The chanting of the rivermen, a sudden wilder shout, the voices of men, and after that the grating of something alongside the bateau came to him like sounds from another world.  Within himself there was a crash greater than that of physical things.  It was the truth breaking upon him, truth surging over him like the waves of a sea, breaking down the barriers he had set up, inundating him with a force that was mightier than his own will.  A voice in his soul was crying out the truth—­that above all else in the world he wanted to reach out his arms to this glorious creature who was the wife of St. Pierre, this woman who had tried to kill him and was sorry.  He knew that it was not desire