She winced at that.  “Why did you not tell me before?”

“It seemed useless to alarm you.”

“But you tell me now.”

I smiled at her.  “I know you better.  It seems fitting to tell you everything now, madame.”

She looked at me with a frown of worry.  “Monsieur, you are in danger from that Huron.  He hates you if you humbled him.”

I laughed at her.  “He would not dare harm a Frenchman, madame.”

“Then why does he follow you?”

But there I could only shrug.  “He was probably in Lord Starling’s pay, and was keeping track of us that he might direct your cousin to us.  But we have shaken him off.”

She thought this over for some time without speaking, and I was content to lie silent at her feet.  Bees droned in the flowers and white drifts of afternoon clouds floated over us.  I was happy in the moment, and more than that, I was drugged with my dreams of the future.  There were days and days and days before us.  This was but the threshold.  And then, with my ear to the ground, I heard the sound of an axe.  The sound of an axe in an untraveled wilderness!

I crowded closer to the ground.  My blood beat in my temples, and I was awake with every muscle.  But I learned nothing.  The sound of an axe and then silence.

The woman looked at me.  “Monsieur, is something wrong?  Your face has changed.”

I stretched out my hand to her.  “You must not grow fanciful.  But come.  It is time to go home, madame.”

I pushed her into the canoe in haste, but when we had once rounded the turn of the bluff we floated home slowly.  The light of late afternoon is warm and yellow.  It cradled the woman in lapping waves, and she sat glowing and fragrant, and her eyes were mirrors of the light.  I dropped my paddle.

“Tell me more about yourself.  Talk to me.  Tell me of your childhood,” I breathed.

She put out her hand.  “Monsieur!  Our contract!”

I let the canoe drift.  “Madame; tell me the truth.  Why do you hold yourself so detached from me?  Is it——­ Madame, is it because you fear that we shall learn to love each other,—­to love against our wills?”

She looked down.  “It would be a tragedy if we did, monsieur.”

“You would think it a tragedy to learn to love me?”

“It could be nothing else, monsieur.”

The breeze took us where it willed.  The mother-of-pearl shimmer of evening was turning the headlands to mist, and the air smelled of cedar and pine.  Tiny waves lapped complainingly on the sides of our rocking canoe.  I leaned forward.

“Listen, madame, you know life.  You know how little is often given under the bond of marriage.  You know how men and women live long lives together though completely sundered in heart, and how others though separated in life walk side by side in the spirit.  As this is so, why do you fear to see or know too much of me?  Propinquity does not create love.”