She looked at me calmly. I hated her silk gown that shone like a breastplate between us. She brushed away my evasion. "It is well known that you carried Madame Bertheau's miniature. You were an ardent suitor, monsieur." Yes, I had been an ardent suitor. I remembered it with amaze. My tongue had not been clogged and middle-aged, in those blithe days, and yet those days were only two years gone. With this woman even Pierre had better speech at his command. "Madame, who told you this?" "Monsieur, the tale is common property in Paris." "May I ask who told you, madame?" "My cousin, monsieur." "I thought so." She looked at me fairly, almost sadly, as if she begged to read my mind. "Monsieur, why should you regret my knowing? It is to your credit that you admire Madame Bertheau. They tell me that she is a woman formed for love, beautiful, childlike, untouched by knowledge of crime or hardship. Monsieur, forgive me. Are you willing---- May I see the miniature?" The transition in my thought was so abrupt that I clapped my hand to my pocket as if it were still there. "It--I am not carrying the miniature." "Did--did the Indians take it from you?" I stepped nearer. "Madame de Montlivet, what right have I to be carrying another woman's miniature? I shall write the fact of my marriage to Madame Bertheau, and the matter will be closed. No, the Indians did not take the miniature. I buried it in the woods." "Monsieur, that was not necessary!" "I thought that it was, madame." She stood with a chair between us. "Monsieur," she said, with her eyes down, "I wish that I had known. It was not necessary. Did you bury the miniature when you married me?" I put the chair aside and stood over her. "No, madame, I did not bury the miniature the day we were married. Do you remember the night of the storm, the night when you asked me if I could save you from your cousin? I rose early the next morning and digged a grave for the picture. It is buried deep,--with all that I once thought that it implied. If I confess now that it implied little you must find excuses for me. I--my heart was in the camp in those days. The rest was pastime. I have left pastimes behind, madame." She would not look at me, yet I felt her change. The flitting, indescribable air of elation that marked her from all women in the world came back. She was again the woman of the forest, the woman who had waked with a song and looked with unhurried pulse into the face of danger. I breathed hard and bent to her, but she kept her eyes away. "The fair little French face," she murmured. "You should not have put it in the cold earth. You were needlessly cruel, monsieur."