I pointed the woman to the forest. "We shall come back to it," I cried. "We leave it now, but we shall come back to it, some time, somehow. Perhaps we shall be settlers, explorers. I do not know. But we shall come back. This land belongs to us; to us and to our children and our children's children. French or English, what will it matter then? It will be a new race." The woman turned. I heard her quick breath and saw the red flood her from chin to brow. "A new race!" she repeated, and her eyes grew dark with the splendor of the thought. She clasped her hands, and looked to the west over the unmapped forest, and I knew that for the moment her blood was pulsing, not for me, but for that unborn race which was to hold this land. I had married a woman, yes, but also I had married a poet and a dreamer and a will incarnate. It was such spirit as hers that would shape the destinies of nations yet to come. I laughed again, and the joy of life ran through me like delirium. "Come!" I cried to her. "Come, we will tell Cadillac that to-morrow we start for Montreal. The sooner we leave, the sooner we return,--return to smell the wood smoke, and try the wilderness together. Come, Mary, come." And wrapping my wife in the cloak that the savage king had given her, I led her out and stood beside her while I sent the tribes upon their way.