“St. Pierre brought me over,” she said in a calmly matter-of-fact voice, as though she had expected David to know that from the beginning.  “He is ashore talking over important matters with Bateese.  I am sure he will drop in and say good night before he returns to the raft.  He asked me to wait for him—­here.”  She raised her eyes, so clear and untroubled, so quietly unembarrassed under his gaze, that he would have staked his life she had no suspicion of the confessions which St. Pierre had revealed to him.

“Do you care?  Would you rather put out the lights and go to bed?”

He shook his head.  “No.  I am glad.  I was beastly lonesome.  I had an idea—­”

He was on the point of blundering again when he caught himself.  The effect of her so near him was more than ever disturbing, in spite of St. Pierre.  Her eyes, clear and steady, yet soft as velvet when they looked at him, made his tongue and his thoughts dangerously uncertain.

“You had an idea, M’sieu David?”

“That you would have no desire to see me again after my talk with St. Pierre,” he said.  “Did he tell you about it?”

“He said you were very fine, M’sieu David—­and that he liked you.”

“And he told you it is determined that I shall fight Bateese in the morning?”

“Yes.”

The one word was spoken with a quiet lack of excitement, even of interest—­it seemed to belie some of the things St. Pierre had told him, and he could scarcely believe, looking at her now, that she had entreated her husband to prevent the encounter, or that she had betrayed any unusual emotion in the matter at all.

“I was afraid you would object,” he could not keep from saying.  “It does not seem nice to pull off such a thing as that, when there is a lady about—­”

“Or ladies.”  She caught him up quickly, and he saw a sudden little tightening of her pretty mouth as she turned her eyes to the bit of lace work again.  “But I do not object, because what St. Pierre says is right—­must be right.”

And the softness, he thought, went altogether out of the curve of her lips for an instant.  In a flash their momentary betrayal of vexation was gone, and St. Pierre’s wife had replaced the work-basket on the table and was on her feet, smiling at him.  There was something of wild daring in her eyes, something that made him think of the glory of adventure he had seen flaming in her face the night they had run the rapids of the Holy Ghost.

“Tomorrow will be very unpleasant, M’sieu David,” she cried softly.  “Bateese will beat you—­terribly.  Tonight we must think of things more agreeable.”