When Eagle had watched them awhile she started up, spread her skirts in a sweeping courtesy, and began to dance a gavotte. The fiddler changed his tune, and the girls rested and watched her. Alternately swift and languid, with the changes of the movement, she saluted backward to the floor, or spun on the tips of rapid feet. I had seen her dance many times, but never with such abandon of joy. Our singular relationship was established in the house, where hospitality made room and apology for all human weakness. Nobody of that region, except the infirm, stayed indoors to shiver by a fire. Eagle and the girls in their warm capotes breasted with me the coldest winter days. She was as happy as they were; her cheeks tingled as pink as theirs. Sometimes I thought her eyes must answer me with her old self-command; their bright grayness was so natural. I believed if her delusions were humored, they would unwind from her like the cloud which she felt them to be. The family had long fallen into the habit of treating her as a child, playing some imaginary character. She seemed less demented than walking in a dream, her faculties asleep. It was somnambulism rather than madness. She had not the expression of insane people, the shifty eyes, the cunning and perverseness, the animal and torpid presence. If I called her Madame de Ferrier instead of my Cloud-Mother, a strained and puzzled look replaced her usual satisfaction. I did not often use the name, nor did I try to make her repeat my own. It was my daily effort to fall in with her happiness, for if she saw any anxiety she was quick to plead: "Don't you like me any more, Paul? Are you tired of me, because I am a Cloud-Mother?" "No," I would answer. "Lazarre will never be tired of you." "Do you think I am growing smaller? Will you love me if I shrink to a baby?" "I will love you." "I used to love you when you were so tiny, Paul, before you knew how to love me back. If I forget how"--she clutched the lapels of my coat--"will you leave me then?" "Eagle, say this: 'Lazarre cannot leave me.'" "Lazarre cannot leave me." I heard her repeating this at her sewing. She boasted to Marie Grignon--"Lazarre cannot leave me!--Paul taught me that." My Cloud-Mother asked me to tell her the stories she used to tell me. She had forgotten them. "I am the child now," she would say. "Tell me the stories." I repeated mythical tribe legends, gathered from Skenedonk on our long rides, making them as eloquent as I could. She listened, holding her breath, or sighing with contentment. If any one in the household smiled when she led me about by the hand, there was a tear behind the smile. She kept herself in perfection, bestowing unceasing care upon her dress, which was always gray. "I have to wear gray; I am in a cloud," she had said to the family.