And David, listening to it, felt something that was more than admiration for this man growing within him.  And unconsciously his lips repeated St. Pierre’s words.

“Tomorrow—­you will fight.”

XVII

For many minutes David stood at the bateau window and watched the canoe that carried St. Pierre Boulain and the Broken Man back to the raft.  It moved slowly, as if St. Pierre was loitering with a purpose and was thinking deeply of what had passed.  Carrigan’s fingers tightened, and his face grew tense, as he gazed out into the glow of the western sun.  Now that the stress of nerve-breaking moments in the cabin was over, he no longer made an effort to preserve the veneer of coolness and decision with which he had encountered the chief of the Boulains.  Deep in his soul he was crushed and humiliated.  Every nerve in his body was bleeding.

He had heard St. Pierre’s big laugh a moment before, but it must have been the laugh of a man who was stabbed to the heart.  And he was going back to Marie-Anne like that—­drifting scarcely faster than the current that he might steal time to strengthen himself before he looked into her eyes again.  David could see him, motionless, his giant shoulders hunched forward a little, his head bowed, and in the stern the Broken Man paddled listlessly, his eyes on the face of his master.  Without voice David cursed himself.  In his egoism he had told himself that he had made a splendid fight in resisting the temptation of a great love for the wife of St. Pierre.  But what was his own struggle compared with this tragedy which St. Pierre was now facing?

He turned from the window and looked about the cabin room again—­ the woman’s room and St. Pierre’s—­and his face burned in its silent accusation.  Like a living thing it painted another picture for him.  For a space he lost his own identity.  He saw himself in the place of St. Pierre.  He was the husband of Marie-Anne, worshipping her even as St. Pierre must worship her, and he came, as St. Pierre had come, to find a stranger in his home, a stranger who had lain in his bed, a stranger whom his wife had nursed back to life, a stranger who had fallen in love with his most inviolable possession, who had told her of his love, who had kissed her, who had held her close, in his arms, whose presence had brought a warmer flush and a brighter glow into eyes and cheeks that until this stranger’s coming had belonged only to him.  And he heard her, as St. Pierre had heard her, pleading with him to keep this man from harm; he heard her soft voice, telling of the things that had passed between them, and he saw in her eyes—­

With almost a cry he swept the thought and the picture from him.  It was an atrocious thing to conceive, impossible of reality.  And yet the truth would not go.  What would he have done in St. Pierre’s place?

He went to the window again.  Yes, St. Pierre was a bigger man than he.  For St. Pierre had come quietly and calmly, offering a hand of friendship, generous, smiling, keeping his hurt to himself, while he, Dave Carrigan, would have come with the murder of man in his heart.