"'Twill do no harm," returned De Artigny, still clasping my hand. "There is time yet before we make our venture." He disappeared in the shadows, leaving us alone, and I glanced aside at De Artigny's face, my heart beating fiercely. "You did not like to hear me speak as I did?" he questioned quietly. "No," I answered honestly, "the thought startled me. If--if anything happened to you, I--I should be all alone." He bent lower, still grasping my fingers, and seeking to compel my eyes to meet his. "Adele," he whispered, "why is it necessary for us to keep up this masquerade?" "What masquerade, Monsieur?" "This pretense at mere friendship," he insisted, "when we could serve each other better by a frank confession of the truth. You love me--" "Monsieur," and I tried to draw my hand away. "I am the wife of Francois Cassion." "I care nothing for that unholy alliance. You are his only by form. Do you know what that marriage has cost me? Insults, ever since we left Quebec. The coward knew I dare not lay hand upon him, because he was your husband. We would have crossed steel a hundred times, but for my memory of you. I could not kill the cur, for to do so would separate us forever. So I bore his taunts, his reviling, his curses, his orders that were insults. You think it was easy? I am a woodsman, a lieutenant of La Salle's, and it has never before been my way to receive insult without a blow. We are not of that breed. Yet I bore it for your sake--why? Because I loved you." "Oh, Monsieur!" "'Tis naught to the shame of either of us," he continued, now speaking with a calmness which held me silent. "And I wish you to know the truth, so far as I can make it clear. This has been in my mind for weeks, and I say it to you now as solemnly as though I knelt before a father confessor. You have been to me a memory of inspiration ever since we first met years ago at that convent in Quebec. I dreamed of you in the wilderness, in the canoe on the great river, and here at St. Louis. Never did _voyageur_ go eastward but I asked him to bring me word from you, and each one, bore from me a message of greeting." "I received none, Monsieur." "I know that; even Sieur de la Salle failed to learn your dwelling place. Yet when he finally chose me as his comrade on this last journey, while I would have followed him gladly even to death, the one hope which held me to the hardships of the trail, was the chance thus given of seeking you myself." "It was I you sought then at the home of Hugo Chevet? not service under Francois Cassion? Yet, when we met, you knew me not."