“It saved the situation, did that marriage; though it was no marriage you will say. Neither was it one way, and I didn’t intend at the start to stand by it an hour longer than I wished. But she was more than I looked for, and it seems to me that she saved my life that winter, or my reason anyhow. There had been so much tragedy that I used to wonder every day what would happen before night; and that’s not a good thing for the brain of a chap of twenty-one or two. The funny part of it is that she wasn’t a pagan--not a bit. She could read and speak English in a sweet old-fashioned way, and she used to sing to me--such a funny, sorry little voice she had--hymns the Moravians had taught her, and one or two English songs. I taught her one or two besides, ‘Where the Hawthorn Tree is Blooming,’ and ‘Allan Water’--the first my father had taught me, the other an old Scotch trader. It’s different with a woman and a man in a place like that. Two men will go mad together, but there’s a saving something in the contact of a man’s brain with a woman’s. I got fond of her, any man would have, for she had something that I never saw in any heathen, certainly in no Indian; you’ll see it in women from Iceland. I determined to marry her in regular style when spring and a missionary came. You can’t understand, maybe, how one can settle to a life where you’ve got companionship, and let the world go by. About that time, I thought that I’d let Ridley Court and the rest of it go as a boy’s dreams go. I didn’t seem to know that I was only satisfied in one set of my instincts. Spring came, so did a missionary, and for better or worse it was.” Sir William came to his feet. “Great Heaven!” he broke out. His wife tried to rise, but could not. “This makes everything impossible,” added the baronet shortly. “No, no, it makes nothing impossible--if you will listen.” Gaston was cool. He had begun playing for the stakes from one stand-point, and he would not turn back. He continued: