This resolution reiterated itself in his mind as the machine-like voice of duty.  He was not thinking of the Law, and yet the consciousness of his accountability to that Law kept repeating itself.  In the very face of it Carrigan knew that something besides the moral obligation of the thing was urging him, something that was becoming deeply and dangerously personal.  At least—­he tried to think of it as dangerous.  And that danger was his unbecoming interest in the girl herself.  It was an interest distinctly removed from any ethical code that might have governed him in his experience with Carmin Fanchet, for instance.  Comparatively, if they had stood together, Carmin would have been the lovelier.  But he would have looked longer at Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain.

He conceded the point, smiling a bit grimly as he continued to study that part of the cabin which he could see from his pillow.  He had lost interest—­temporarily at least—­in Black Roger Audemard.  Not long ago the one question to which, above all others, he had desired an answer was, why had Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain worked so desperately to kill him and so hard to save him afterward?  Now, as he looked about him, the question which repeated itself insistently was, what relationship did she bear to this mysterious lord of the north, St. Pierre?

Undoubtedly she was his daughter, for whom St. Pierre had built this luxurious barge of state.  A fierce-blooded offspring, he thought, one like Cleopatra herself, not afraid to kill—­and equally quick to make amends when there was a mistake.

There came the quiet opening of the cabin door to break in upon his thought.  He hoped it was Jeanne Marie-Anne returning to him.  It was Nepapinas.  The old Indian stood over him for a moment and put a cold, claw-like hand to his forehead.  He grunted and nodded his head, his little sunken eyes gleaming with satisfaction.  Then he put his hands under David’s arms and lifted him until he was sitting upright, with three or four pillows at his back.

“Thanks,” said Carrigan.  “That makes me feel better.  And—­if you don’t mind—­my last lunch was three days ago, boiled prunes and a piece of bannock—­”

“I have brought you something to eat, M’sieu David,” broke in a soft voice behind him.

Nepapinas slipped away, and Jeanne Marie-Anne stood in his place.  David stared up at her, speechless.  He heard the door close behind the old Indian.  Then Jeanne Marie-Anne drew up a chair, so that for the first time he could see her clear eyes with the light of day full upon her.

He forgot that a few days ago she had been his deadliest enemy.  He forgot the existence of a man named Black Roger Audemard.  Her slimness was as it had pictured itself to him in the hot sands.  Her hair was as he had seen it there.  It was coiled upon her head like ropes of spun silk, jet-black, glowing softly.  But it was her eyes he stared at, and so fixed was his look that the red lips trembled a bit on the verge of a smile.  She was not embarrassed.  There was no color in the clear whiteness of her skin, except that redness of her lips.