Her words sounded mockery.  “Thank you, madame.”  I knew my tone was bitter.

She looked at me reproachfully.  “Monsieur, you are unkind.  I meant what I said.  I heard you in the council yesterday.  I asked to go in that I might hear you.  I know something of what you have done this summer.  I know how you fended away massacre the other night.  This is a crucial time, and you are the only man who can handle the situation; the only man who has influence to lead the united tribes.  Your opportunity is wonderful.  You are making history.  You may be changing the map of nations, you—­alone here—­working with a few Indians.  Believe me, I see it all.  It is wonderful, monsieur.”

“But what has this to do with you and me?”

“Just this, monsieur.  I cannot forget my blood.  I am an Englishwoman.  I come of a family that has chosen exile rather than yield a point of honor that involved the crown.  I have been bred to that idea of country, nurtured on it.  Could I stay with you and see you work against my people?  If I were a different sort of woman; if I were the gentle girl that you should marry,—­one who knew no life but flattery and courts, like the lady of the miniature,—­why, then it might be possible for me to think of you only in relation to myself, and to forget all that you stood for.  But I am—­what I am.  I have known tragedy and suffering.  I cannot blind myself with dreams as a girl might, and I understand fully the significance of what you are doing.  We should have a divided hearth, monsieur.”

She had made her long speech with breaks, but I had not interrupted her.  And now that she had finished I did not speak till she looked at me in wonder.

“I am thinking.  I see that it comes to this, madame.  I must renounce either my work or my wife.”

She suddenly stretched out her hand.  “Oh, I would not have you renounce your work, monsieur!”

A chair stood in front of her, and I brushed it away and let it clatter on the floor.

“Mary!  Mary, you love me!”

“No, no!” she cried.  “No, monsieur, it need not mean I love you,—­it need not.”  She fled from me and placed a table between us.  “Surely a woman can understand a man’s power, and glory in it—­yes, glory in it, monsieur—­without loving the man!”

“But if you did love me,—­if you did love me, what then?”

“Oh, monsieur, the misery of it for us if we loved!  I have seen it from the beginning, though at times I forgot.  For there is nothing for us but to part.”

“Many women have forgotten country for their husbands.  The world has called them wise.”

She put out her hand.  “Not in my family, monsieur.”

And then the face of Lord Starling came before me.  “You have changed from the woman of the wilderness.  You changed when you put on this gown.  You were different even three days ago.  Some influence has worked on you here.”