I put the chair aside and stood over her.  “No, madame, I did not bury the miniature the day we were married.  Do you remember the night of the storm, the night when you asked me if I could save you from your cousin?  I rose early the next morning and digged a grave for the picture.  It is buried deep,—­with all that I once thought that it implied.  If I confess now that it implied little you must find excuses for me.  I—­my heart was in the camp in those days.  The rest was pastime.  I have left pastimes behind, madame.”

She would not look at me, yet I felt her change.  The flitting, indescribable air of elation that marked her from all women in the world came back.  She was again the woman of the forest, the woman who had waked with a song and looked with unhurried pulse into the face of danger.  I breathed hard and bent to her, but she kept her eyes away.

“The fair little French face,” she murmured.  “You should not have put it in the cold earth.  You were needlessly cruel, monsieur.”

I bent lower.  “I was not cruel.  I gave her a giant sepulchre.  That is over.  But I—­I shall have another miniature.  I know a skilled man in Paris.  Some time—­some time I mean to have your portrait in your Indian blouse; in your skin blouse with the sun in your hair.”  My free hand suddenly crept to her shoulder, “May I have it?  May I have it, madame?”

I cannot remember.  Often as I have tried, I can never quite remember.  I am not sure that I heard her whisper.  But I think that I did.  She quivered under my touch, but she did not draw away, and so we stood for a moment, while my hand wandered where it had gone in dreams and rested on her hair.  “Mary!” I whispered, and once more we let the silence lie like a pledge between us.

But in the moment of silence I heard again what I had forgotten,—­the roar of the camp outside.  It seemed louder than it had been, and it claimed my thought.  I checked my breath to listen, holding the woman’s hand in mine.  And while we listened, Cadillac’s loud step and cheerful voice came down the passage.  The woman drew her hand away, and I let her go.  I let her go as if I were ashamed.  I have cursed myself for that ever since.

Cadillac stopped.  “Are you there, Montlivet?” he called.  “When you are at leisure, come to my room.”  I heard his step retreat.

And then I turned to the woman.  But with Cadillac’s voice a change had come.  My mind was again heavy with anxiety.  I remembered the thronging Indians without, the pressing responsibilities within.  I remembered the volcano under us.  For the moment I could not think of my personal claims on the woman.  I could think only of my anxiety for her.  Yet I went to her and took her hand.

“Mary,—­I am weary of madame and monsieur between us,—­you are my wife.  May I talk of our future?”

I spoke in the very words I had used the night I asked her to marry me,—­to marry me for my convenience.  I remembered it as I heard my tongue form the phrase, and it recalled my argument of that time,—­that she must marry me because my plans were more to me than her wishes.