“It ought to satisfy me somewhat to learn that he doesn’t care for you, but—­somehow it doesn’t.  He didn’t care for me, either.  But I cared for him.  I love him now, just as you love him—­better, probably.  Oh, why conceal it?  I’ve spent a good many black hours thinking about it and trying to fight it.  Mind you, it wasn’t his fault; it was just fate.  There are some fellows who go smiling and singing along through life—­clean, decent fellows, too—­attending to their own affairs in a perfectly proper manner, but leaving a trail of havoc behind them.  It isn’t so true of women—­they’re usually flirts—­their smiles don’t last and the echo of their songs dies out.  He’s perfectly impossible for me.  I wouldn’t marry him if I were free and if he asked me.  But that has nothing whatever to do with the case.”

“I had no idea!” Rouletta said.  “I suppose there’s no hope for me, either.  I’m not his kind.  He’s told me about his life, his people.  I wouldn’t fit in.”

“It isn’t that—­people are adaptable, they make themselves fit, for a while at least—­it’s a question of identities.  As much a matter of family histories as anything else.  You’re his antithesis in every respect and—­like should mate with like.  Now then, about this other trouble.  I must work in my own way, and I see but one.  I’ll have to pay high, but—­” The speaker lifted her shoulders as if a cold wind had chilled her.  “I’ve paid high, up to date, and I suppose I shall to the end.  Meanwhile, if you can get him out of jail, do so by all means.  I can’t.  I daren’t even try.”

When, at a late hour, Count Henri Courteau entered the establishment that bore his name he was both surprised and angered to find his wife still awake.  The guests of the hotel were asleep, the place was quiet, but the Countess was reading in an easy-chair beside the office stove.  She was in negligee, her feet were resting upon the stove fender.  She turned her head to say: 

“Well, Henri, you look better than I thought you would.”

The Count passed a caressing hand over his swollen cheek and his discolored left eye.  “You heard about the fight, eh?” he inquired, thickly.

“Yes—­if you’d call it that.”

Courteau grimaced, but there was a ring of triumph and of satisfaction in his voice when he cried: 

“Well, what do you think of that fellow?  It was like him, wasn’t it, after I had caught him red-handed?”

“To punch you?  Quite like him,” agreed the woman.

“Pig!  To strike a defenseless man.  Without warning, too.  It shows his breeding.  And now”—­the speaker sneered openly—­“I suppose you will bail him out.”

“Indeed!  Why should I?”

“Oh, don’t pretend innocence!” the Count stormed.  “Don’t act so unconcerned.  What’s your game, anyhow?  Whatever it is, that fellow will cut cord-wood for the rest of the winter where the whole of Dawson can see him and say, ’Behold the lover of the Countess Courteau!’”