The hand under my lips grew warm.  “Monsieur, we are to wait.  When we reach Montreal”——­

“But, madame!  These intervening months!  It will be late autumn before we return to Montreal.”

She drew in her breath.  “Late autumn!  Monsieur, what are your plans?  You forget that I know nothing.  And tell me of your escape.”

I rose and looked down at her.  “We have both escaped,” I said, and because emotion was smiting me my voice was hard.  “Let us not talk of it.  I see that you are here, and I thank God.  But I cannot yet bring myself to ask what you have been through.  I cannot face the horror of it for you.  I beg you to understand.”

But it was I who did not understand when she drew away.  “As you will,” she agreed, and there was pride in her great eyes, but there was a wound as well.  “Yet why,” she went on, “should a knowledge of human tragedy harden a woman?  It strengthens a man.  But enough.  Monsieur, have you heard—­the lady of the miniature is at Montreal?”

I was slow, for I was wondering how I had vexed her.  “You never saw the miniature,” I parried.  “How can you connect a name with it, madame?”

She looked at me calmly.  I hated her silk gown that shone like a breastplate between us.  She brushed away my evasion.

“It is well known that you carried Madame Bertheau’s miniature.  You were an ardent suitor, monsieur.”

Yes, I had been an ardent suitor.  I remembered it with amaze.  My tongue had not been clogged and middle-aged, in those blithe days, and yet those days were only two years gone.  With this woman even Pierre had better speech at his command.

“Madame, who told you this?”

“Monsieur, the tale is common property in Paris.”

“May I ask who told you, madame?”

“My cousin, monsieur.”

“I thought so.”

She looked at me fairly, almost sadly, as if she begged to read my mind.  “Monsieur, why should you regret my knowing?  It is to your credit that you admire Madame Bertheau.  They tell me that she is a woman formed for love, beautiful, childlike, untouched by knowledge of crime or hardship.  Monsieur, forgive me.  Are you willing——­ May I see the miniature?”

The transition in my thought was so abrupt that I clapped my hand to my pocket as if it were still there.

“It—­I am not carrying the miniature.”

“Did—­did the Indians take it from you?”

I stepped nearer.  “Madame de Montlivet, what right have I to be carrying another woman’s miniature?  I shall write the fact of my marriage to Madame Bertheau, and the matter will be closed.  No, the Indians did not take the miniature.  I buried it in the woods.”

“Monsieur, that was not necessary!”

“I thought that it was, madame.”

She stood with a chair between us.  “Monsieur,” she said, with her eyes down, “I wish that I had known.  It was not necessary.  Did you bury the miniature when you married me?”