“Jean Coeur—­ Louis de Contrecoeur.  The names scarce hang together—­ yet——­”

“Look at this!” she whispered in a low, tense voice, and laid a bit of printing in my hand.

It was a stained and engraved sheet of paper—­ a fly-leaf detached from a book of Voltaire.  And above the scroll-encompassed title was written in faded ink:  “Le Capitaine Vicomte Louis Jean de Contrecoeur du Regiment de la Reine.”  And under that, in a woman’s fine handwriting:  “Mon coeur, malgre; mon coeur, se rendre a Contrecoeur, dit Jean Coeur; coeur contre coeur.”

“That,” she said, “is the same writing that the birch bark bears, sewed in my moccasins.”

“Then,” I said excitedly, “your mother was born Mademoiselle Joncaire, and you are Lois de Contrecoeur!”

She sat with eyes lowered, fingering the stained and faded page.  After a moment she said: 

“I wrote to France—­ to the Headquarters of the Regiment de la Reine—­ asking about my—­ father.”

“You had an answer?”

“Aye, the answer came....  Merely a word or two....  The Vicomte Louis Jean de Contrecoeur fell at Lake George in ’55——­” She lifted her clear eyes to mine.  “And died—­ unmarried.”

A chill passed through me, then the reaction came, taking me by the throat, setting my veins afire.

“Then—­ by God!” I stammered.  “If de Contrecoeur died unmarried, his child shall not!”

“Euan!  I do not credit what they wrote.  If my father married here perhaps they had not heard.”

“Lois!  Dearest of maids—­ whichever is the truth I wish to marry you!”

But she stopped her ears with both palms, giving me a frightened look; and checked, but burning still, I stared at her.

“Is that then all you are?” she asked.  “A wisp of tow to catch the first spark that flies?  A brand ever smouldering, which the first breath o’ woman stirs to flame?”

“Never have I loved before——­”

“Love!  Euan, are you mad?”

We both were breathing fast and brokenly.

“What is it then, if it be not love!” I asked angrily.

“What is it?” she repeated slowly.  Yet I seemed to feel in her very voice a faint, cool current of contempt.  “Why, it is what always urges men to speak, I fancy—­ their natural fire—­ their easily provoked emotions....  I had believed you different.”

“Did you not desire my friendship?” I asked in hot chagrin.

“Not if it be of this kind, Euan.”

“You would not have me love you?”

“Love!” And the fine edge of her contempt cut clean.  “Love!” she repeated coolly.  “And we scarcely know each other; have never passed a day together; have never broken bread; know nothing, nothing of each other’s minds and finer qualities; have awakened nothing in each other yet except emotions.  Friendships have their deeps and shallows, but are deathless only while they endure.  Love hath no shallows, Euan, and endures often when