"Have you, then, never learned that a woman is full of whims, Monsieur?" she questioned. "Why, this afternoon your eyes were so big with wonder that they had forgotten to look at me. Truly, I spoke to you twice to aid me from the saddle; but you heard nothing, and in my desperation I was obliged to turn to the courtesy of Captain de Croix. Ah, there is a soldier, my friend, who is never so preoccupied as to neglect his duty to a lady." "It was indeed most ungallant of me," I stammered, scarce knowing whether she laughed at me or not. "Yet my surroundings were all new, and I have the training of De Croix in such matters." "Pah! 't is just as well. I am inclined to like you as you are, my friend, and we shall not quarrel; yet, with all his love for lesser things, your comrade has always shown himself a truly gallant gentleman." I made no answer to these flattering words, for I felt them to be true; yet no less this open praise of him, falling from her lips, racked me sorely, and I lacked the art to make light of it. "The soldiers in the block-house tell me you come here often," I ventured at last, for the dead silence weighed upon me. "You have never seemed to me like one who would seek such loneliness." "I am one whom very few wholly comprehend, I fear, and surely not upon first acquaintance," she answered thoughtfully, "for I am full of strange moods, and perhaps dream more than other girls. This may have been born of my early convent training, and the mystic tales of the nuns; nor has it been lessened by the loneliness of the frontier. So, if I differ from other young women, you may know 't is my training, as well as my nature, that may account for it. I have led a strange life, Monsieur, and one that has known much of sadness. There are times when I seek my own thoughts, and find liking for no other company. Then I come here, and in some way the loneliness of water and plain soothe me as human speech cannot. I used to love to stand yonder by the eastern wall and gaze out over the Great Lake, watching the green surges chase each other until they burst in spray along the beach. But since I went adrift in the little boat, and felt the cruelty of the water, I have shrunk from looking out upon it. Monsieur, have you never known how restful it sometimes is to be alone?" "My life has mostly been a solitary one," I answered, responding unconsciously to her mood, and, in doing so, forgetting my embarrassment. "It is the birthright of all children of the frontier. Indeed, I have seen so little of the great world and so much of the woods, that I scarcely realize what companionship means, especially that of my own age. I have made many a solitary camp leagues from the nearest settlement, and have tracked the forest alone for days together, so content with my own thought that possibly I understand your meaning better than if my life had been passed among crowds."