“I wish that I might answer those questions for you,” she said, in a voice that was low and tired.  “I should like to have you know, because I—­I have great faith in you, Jeems.  But I cannot.  It is impossible.  It is inconceivable.  If I did—­” She made a hopeless little gesture.  “If I told you everything, you would not like me any more.  And I want you to like me—­until you go north with M’sieu Jean and his brigade.”

“And when I do that,” cried Kent, almost savagely, “I shall find this place you call the Valley of Silent Men, if it takes me all my life.”

It was becoming a joy for him to see the sudden flashes of pleasure that leaped into her eyes.  She attempted no concealment.  Whatever her emotions were they revealed themselves unaffectedly and with a simple freedom from embarrassment that swept him with an almost reverential worship.  And what he had just said pleased her.  Unreservedly her glowing eyes and her partly smiling lips told him that, and she said:  “I am glad you feel that way, Jeems.  And I think you would find it—­in time.  Because—­”

Her little trick of looking at him so steadily, as if there was something inside him which she was trying to see more clearly, made him feel more helplessly than ever her slave.  It was as if, in those moments, she forgot that he was of flesh and blood, and was looking into his heart to see what was there before she gave voice to things.

And then she said, still twisting her braid between her slim fingers, “You would find it—­perhaps—­because you are one who would not give up easily.  Shall I tell you why I came to see you at Doctor Cardigan’s?  It was curiosity, at first—­largely that.  Just why or how I was interested in the man you freed is one of the things I can not tell you.  And I can not tell you why I came to the Landing.  Nor can I say a word about Kedsty.  It may be, some day, that you will know.  And then you will not like me.  For nearly four years before I saw you that day I had been in a desolation.  It was a terrible place.  It ate my heart and soul out with its ugliness, its loneliness, its emptiness.  A little while longer and I would have died.  Then the thing happened that brought me away.  Can you guess where it was?”

He shook his head, “No.”

“To all the others it was a beautiful place, Montreal.”

“You were at school there?” he guessed.

“Yes, the Villa Maria.  I wasn’t quite sixteen then.  They were kind.  I think they liked me.  But each night I prayed one prayer.  You know what the Three Rivers are to us, to the people of the North.  The Athabasca is Grandmother, the Slave is Mother, the Mackenzie is Daughter, and over them watches always the goddess Niska, the Gray Goose.  And my prayer was that I might go back to them.  In Montreal there were people, people everywhere, thousands and tens of thousands of them, so many that I was lonely and heartsick and wanted to get away.  For the