“They are not all corrupt!” I declared with vehemence. “The governor is honest. The general is honour itself. But, alas, the most grievous enemies of New France are those within her gate! Bigot is the prince of robbers. His hands and those of his gang are at her throat. It is he we fear, and not you English, brave and innumerable though you are.” And with this my indignation at Vergor, who, it was plain, had put upon me an errand unbecoming to a gentleman and an officer of the king, spread out to include the whole corrupt crew of which the intendant Bigot was the too efficient captain. Seating myself again by the hearth, I gave bitter account of the wrong and infamy at Quebec, and showed how, to the anguish of her faithful sons, New France was being stripped and laid bare to the enemy. My heart being as dead with my own sudden sorrow, the story which I told of my country’s plight was steeped in dark forebodings. When I had finished, the conversation became general, and I presently withdrew into my heaviness. I remember that Madame rallied me, at last, on my silence; but Yvonne came quickly and sweetly to my help, recalling my long day’s journey and insisting upon my drinking a cup of spiced brandy—“very sound and good,” she declared, “and but late from Louisburg, no thanks to King George!” As I sat sipping of the fragrant brew—though it had been wormwood it had seemed to me delicate from her hand—I tried to gather together the shattered fragments of my dream. There she sat—of all women the one woman, as I had in the long, solitary night-watches come to know, whom my soul needed and my body needed. My inmost thought, speaking with itself in nakedest sincerity, declared that it was she only whom God had made for me—or for whom God had made me. The whole truth, as I felt it, required both statements to perfect its expression. There she sat, so near that her voice was making a wonder of music in my ears, so near that her eyes from time to time flashed a palpable radiance upon my face; yet further away than when I lightened with dreams of her the long marches beside the Miami or lay awake to think of her, in the remote huts of the Natchez. So far away had a word, a brief word, put her; yet here she sat where I could grasp her just by stretching out my hand. As I thought of it her eyes met mine. I swear that I made no motion. My grasp never relaxed from the arm of the black old chair where it had fixed itself. Yet the thought must have cried out to her, for a look of alarm, yet not wholly of denial, flickered for one heart-beat in her gaze. She rose, with a little aimless movement, looked at me, swayed her body toward me almost imperceptibly, then sat down again in her old place with her face averted. At once she began talking with a whimsical gayety that engrossed all ears and left me again in my gloom.