He wondered what Marie-Anne was doing in this hour.  Last night they had been together.  He had marveled at the witchery of the moonlight in her hair and eyes, he had told her of the beauty of it, she had smiled, she had laughed softly with him—­for hours they had sat in the spell of the golden night and the glory of the river.  And tonight—­now—­was she with St. Pierre, waiting as they had waited last night for the rising of the moon?  Had she forgotten?  Could she forget?  Or was she, as he thought St. Pierre had painfully tried to make him believe, innocent of all the thoughts and desires that had come to him, as he sat worshipping her in their stolen hours?  He could think of them only as stolen, for he did not believe Marie-Anne had revealed to her husband all she might have told him.

He was sure he would never see her again as he had seen her then, and something of bitterness rose in him as he thought of that.  St. Pierre, could he have seen her face and eyes when he told her that her hair in the moonlight was lovelier than anything he had ever seen, would have throttled him with his naked hands in that meeting in the cabin.  For St. Pierre’s code would not have had her eyes droop under their long lashes or her cheeks flush so warmly at the words of another man—­and he could not take vengeance on the woman herself.  No, she had not told St. Pierre all she might have told!  There were things which she must have kept to herself, which she dared not reveal even to this great-hearted man who was her husband.  Shame, if nothing more, had kept her silent.

Did she feel that shame as he was feeling it?  It was inconceivable to think otherwise.  And for that reason, more than all others, he knew that she would not meet him face to face again—­unless he forced that meeting.  And there was little chance of that, for his pledge with St. Pierre had eliminated her from the aftermath of tomorrow’s drama, his fight with Bateese.  Only when St. Pierre might stand in a court of law would there be a possibility of her eyes meeting his own again, and then they would flame with the hatred that at another time had been in the eyes of Carmin Fanchet.

With the dull stab of a thing that of late had been growing inside him, he wondered what had happened to Carmin Fanchet in the years that had gone since he had brought about the hanging of her brother.  Last night and the night before, strange dreams of her had come to him in restless slumber.  It was disturbing to him that he should wake up in the middle of the night dreaming of her, when he had gone to his bed with a mind filled to overflowing with the sweet presence of Marie-Anne Boulain.  And now his mind reached out poignantly into mysterious darkness and doubt, even as the darkness of night spread itself in a thickening canopy over the river.

Gray clouds had followed the sun of a faultless day, and the stars were veiled overhead.  When David turned from the window, it was so dark in the cabin that he could not see.  He did not light the lamps, but made his way to St. Pierre’s couch and sat down in the silence and gloom.