I had taken her in the canoe with the woman and myself, and putting Pierre in her canoe had bidden him follow.  I was well satisfied to keep them apart for a time.  Yet no sister of the Ursulines could have been more exemplary with her glances than this Indian was just then.  She sat like a figure of destiny and watched the woman.  Whether she admired or not I should not know till I saw whether she intended to imitate.

Cadillac’s letter lay heavy in my pocket that day and disinclined me to speech.  Should I show it to the woman and ask her what she would like to do?  And having asked her, should I let her preference warp my final decision?  I was not sure.  The manner of my life had confirmed me in my natural inclination to decide things for myself and take no counsel.  And now all my desires called out to me to destroy this letter and say nothing.  Why should I wish to meet Lord Starling?  And by keeping out of the way I should be playing into Cadillac’s hands and therefore furthering my own ends.  Yet the woman!  After all, Starling was her cousin.  Had she not the right to choose for herself whether she should see him?  My training and instinct said no to this last question.  Women were made to be cared for, at whatever cost, but not to be taken into confidence as to ways and means.  Still I had entered into a bond with this woman.  I breathed hard.  I had always been restive under any bond, though by nature plodding enough when it was removed.  I was aware that I was but sullen company while I rolled this matter in my mind.

The day was warm, and by afternoon soaring pinions of cloud pushed up from the western horizon.  I watched their white edges curl and blacken, and when they began to be laced with red lightning I said to the woman that we should have to land.

“Though I hoped to make the Sturgeon Cove,” I added idly.

The breeze was rising, drawing sharp criss-cross furrows on the water, and I noticed how it ruffled the woman’s hair; her hair was like her eyes, a warm red-brown.

“What is Sturgeon Cove?” she asked.  “Is it a bay,—­a larger one than we have passed?”

I took a rough map from my wallet and handed it to her.  “Much larger, you see,” I said.  “It almost bisects the peninsula.  Only the Sturgeon portage, about a mile long, separates it from the lake of the Illinois.  We must be near it now.”

She gave but a look at the map, then glanced at the cloud-streaked west and at the shore.

“Try to make it.  Try to reach Sturgeon Cove,” she urged.

I was thinking of something else, so I answered her only by a shake of the head.  Perhaps that angered her.  At all events she smote her palms together with a short, soft little clap, such as I use when I call my dog.

“I do not wish to land here,” she said, throwing back her head at me quite as she had done when I thought her a boy.  “I wish to go on.  Why not?”