“You want the whole of it!” I exclaimed.

She picked up her embroidery again and bent over it with a smile.

“Yes, I want the whole of it.”

So I began at the cabin in the mountains.  I cannot say that I ever forgot she was listening, but I lost myself in the narrative.  It presented to me, for the first time, many aspects that I had not thought of.  For instance, that I should be here now in Louisiana telling it to one who had been the companion and friend of the Queen of France.  Once in a while the Vicomtesse would look up at me swiftly, when I paused, and then go on with her work again.  I told her of Temple Bow, and how I had run away; of Polly Ann and Tom, of the Wilderness Trail and how I shot Cutcheon, of the fight at Crab Orchard, of the life in Kentucky, of Clark and his campaign.  Of my doings since; how I had found Nick and how he had come to New Orleans with me; of my life as a lawyer in Louisville, of the conventions I had been to.  The morning wore on to midday, and I told her more than I believed it possible to tell any one.  When at last I had finished a fear grew upon me that I had told her too much.  Her fingers still stitched, her head was bent and I could not see her face,—­only the knot of her hair coiled with an art that struck me suddenly.  Then she spoke, and her voice was very low.

“I love Polly Ann,” she said; “I should like to know her.”

“I wish that you could know her,” I answered, quickening.

She raised her head, and looked at me with an expression that was not a smile.  I could not say what it was, or what it meant.

“I do not think you are stupid,” she said, in the same tone, “but I do not believe you know how remarkable your life has been.  I can scarcely realize that you have seen all this, have done all this, have felt all this.  You are a lawyer, a man of affairs, and yet you could guide me over the hidden paths of half a continent.  You know the mountain ranges, the passes, the rivers, the fords, the forest trails, the towns and the men who made them!” She picked up her sewing and bent over it once more.  “And yet you did not think that this would interest me.”

Perchance it was a subtle summons in her voice I heard that bade me open the flood-gates of my heart,—­I know not.  I know only that no power on earth could have held me silent then.

“Helene!” I said, and stopped.  My heart beat so wildly that I could hear it.  “I do not know why I should dare to think of you, to look up to you—­Helene, I love you, I shall love you till I die.  I love you with all the strength that is in me, with all my soul.  You know it, and if you did not I could hide it no more.  As long as I live there will never be another woman in the world for me.  I love you.  You will forgive me because of the torture I have suffered, because of the pain I shall suffer when I think of you in the years to come.”

Her sewing dropped to her lap—­to the floor.  She looked at me, and the light which I saw in her eyes flooded my soul with a joy beyond my belief.  I trembled with a wonder that benumbed me.  I would have got to my feet had she not come to me swiftly, that I might not rise.  She stood above me, I lifted up my arms; she bent to me with a movement that conferred a priceless thing.