Suddenly the door swung open. In the embrasure stood Aurore in her red mackinaw and corduroy trousers. A pair of snowshoes hung over her back, and her hand gripped a short-handled broad axe. Her great eyes turned from Crossman to the Curé, and across her crimson mouth crept her slow smile. The Curé sprang to his feet at sight of her, his face went white, and the lines from nose to lips seemed to draw in. "Aurore!" he exclaimed; "Aurore!" "_Oui, mon père_," she drawled. "It is Aurore." She struck a provocative pose, her hand on her hip, her head thrown back, while her eyes changed colour as alexandrite in the sun. The Curé turned on Crossman. "What is this woman to you?" Her eyes defied him. "Tell him," she jeered. "What _am_ I to you?" "She is here with Antoine Marceau, the log-brander," Crossman answered unsteadily. "She takes care of our cabin, Jakapa's and mine." "Is that _all_?" the Priest demanded. Her eyes challenged him. What, indeed, was she to him? What _was_ she? From the moment he had followed her into the boreal night, with its streaming lights of mystery and promise, she had held his imagination and his thoughts. "Is that _all_?" the Priest insisted. "You insult both this girl and me," Crossman retorted, stung to sudden anger. "_Dieu merci_!" the Curé made the sign of the cross as he spoke. "As for this woman, send her away. She is _not_ the wife of Antoine Marceau; she is not married--she _will_ not be." In spite of himself a savage joy burned in Crossman's veins. She was the wife of no man; she was a free being, whatever else she was. "I do not have to marry," she jeered. "That is for the women that only one man desires--or perhaps two--like some in your parish, _mon père_." "She is evil," the Priest continued, paying no attention to her sneering comment. "I know not what she is, nor who. One night, in autumn, in the dark of the hour before morning, she was brought to me by some Indians. They had found her, a baby, wrapped in furs, in an empty canoe, rocking almost under the Grande Falls. But I tell you, and to my sorrow, I _know_, she is evil. She knows not God, nor God her. You, whose soul is sick, flee her as you would the devil! Aurore, the Dawn! I named her, because she came so near the morning. Aurore! Ah, God! She should be named after the blackest hour of a witch's Sabbath!" She laughed. It was the first time Crossman had heard her laugh--a deep, slow, far-away sound, more like an eerie echo. "_He_ has a better name for me," she said, casting Crossman a look whose intimacy made his blood run hot within him. "'The Black Dawn'--_n'est-ce-pas?_ Though I _have_ heard him call me in the night--by another name," with which equivocal statement she swung the axe into the curve of her arm, turned on her heel, and softly closed the door between them. The Priest turned on him. "My son," his eyes searched Crossman's, "you have not lied to me?"