I motioned Pierre to the shore.  “Because you would get wet,” I answered stoically.

She flushed as redly as if I had hurt her.  “And if I did?” she cried.  “Better discomfort than this constant humiliation.  Monsieur, I refuse to be made a burden of in this fashion.  It is not fair.  You made your plans to reach a certain point, and you would go on, rain or otherwise, if it were not for me.  For me, for me, for me!  I am sick of the sound of the words in my own brain.  I am sick of the excuse.  Each added sacrifice you make for me weighs me like lead.  It binds me.  I cannot endure the obligation.  Believe me, monsieur.”

I had no choice but to believe her.  Yet she stopped with a gasp of the breath, as if she had said too much, or perhaps too little,—­as if she were dissatisfied.  Well, I had but scant desire to reply.  I should have liked to walk away, and rebelled in my heart at our forced nearness in the canoe.  My feeling was not new.  When I had thought her a man she had antagonized me in spite of my interest; as a maid she had troubled me, and now as my wife I found that she had already power to wound.  Still, with all my inner heat, I could look as it were in a mirror and understand her unhappiness and vexation.  She was trying to act towards me with a man’s fairness and detachment, but each move that I made showed that I considered her solely as a woman and therefore an encumbrance.  Let her act with whatever bravery and wisdom she might, her sex still enmeshed us like a silken trap.  We could not escape it.  And it was a fetter.  Mask it as courteously as I would, the fact remained that it was undoubtedly a fetter.  I felt a certain compassion for her and her forced dependence, and said to myself that I would hide my own soreness.  But her words had bitten, and I am not a patient man.

I turned my canoe inland, and looked to it that the others did the same.  Then I leaned toward her.

“No, we will land here,” I said.  “Madame, I am frequently forced to look behind your words, which are sharp, and search for your meaning, which is admirable.  You resent being an encumbrance.  May I suggest that you will be less one if you follow my plans without opposition?  I mean no discourtesy, madame, when I say that no successful expedition can have two heads in control.”

With all her great self-discipline in some directions, she had none in others, and I braced myself for her retort.  But none came.  Instead she looked at me almost wistfully.

“I lose my temper when I wish I did not,” she said.  “But I should like to help you, monsieur.”

I laid down my paddle.  “Help is a curious quantity,” I replied.  “Especially here in the wilderness where what we say counts for so little and what we are for so much.  I think,—­it comes to me now,—­madame, you have given me strength more than once when you did not suspect it.  So you need not try to help me consciously.  But now I need your counsel.  Will you read this?” and I took Cadillac’s letter from my pocket and handed it to her.