“Bright are the jewels they add to the crown,
    Levied on savage and pilfered from slave: 
  Under the winds and the suns that brown,
    Fearing nor desert, the sea, nor the grave! 
    High shall the Future their names engrave,
  For these are lives that are not spent in vain,
    Though their reward be a tomb ’neath the wave. 
  These are the hazards that kings disdain!

“I will try to remember the last stanza and the envoi as we go along,” added Victor.

And together they passed down the ravine, two brave hearts assuming a gaiety which deceived only the Chevalier, who still reclined against the boulder and was proceeding silently to inspect the golden plush of an empty bur.  Two or three minutes passed; Victor’s voice became indistinct and finally was heard no longer, Madame surveyed the Chevalier with a lurking scornful smile.  This man was going to force her to love him!

“Monsieur, you seem determined to annoy me.  I shall not ask you to speak again.”

“Is it possible that I can still annoy you, Madame?”

Madame crushed a bur with her foot . . . and gasped.  She had forgotten the loose seam in her moccasin.  The delicate needles had penetrated the flesh.  This little comedy, however, passed over his head.

“I did not ask you to accompany me to-day.”

“So I observed.  Nor did I ask to come.  That is why I believed in silence.  Besides, I have said all I have to say,” quietly.  He cast aside the bur.

“Then your vocabulary consists of a dozen words, such as, ’It is a far cry from the Louvre to this spot’?”

“I believe I used the word ‘galleries.’” Their past was indissolubly linked to this word.

“On a certain day you vowed that you should force me to love you.  What progress have you made, Monsieur?  I am curious.”

“No man escapes being an ass sometimes, Madame.  That was my particular morning.”

Decidedly, this lack of interest on his part annoyed her.  He had held her in his arms one night, and had not kissed her; he had vowed to force her to love him, and now he sat still and unruffled under her contempt.  What manner of man was it?

“When are we to be returned to Quebec?  I am weary, very weary, of all this.  There are no wits; men have no tongues, but purposes.”

“Whenever Father Chaumonot thinks it safe and men can be spared, he will make preparations.  It will be before the winter sets in.”

Madame sat down upon an adjacent boulder, and reflected.

“Shall I gather you some chestnuts, Madame?  They are not so ripe as they might be, but I daresay the novelty of eating them here in the wilderness will appeal to your appetite.”

“If you will be so kind,” grudgingly.

So he set to work gathering the nuts while she secretly took off her moccasin in a vain attempt to discover the disquieting bur-needles.  He returned presently and deposited a hatful of nuts in her lap.  Then he went back to his seat from where he watched her calmly as she munched the starchy meat.  It gradually dawned on him that the situation was absurd; and he permitted a furtive smile to soften his firm lips.  But furtive as it was, she saw it, and colored, her quick intuition translating the smile.