The fingers released their grip, Lapierre's gun was jerked from its holster, and a moment later thumped heavily upon the floor of the kitchen fifteen feet away, while the woman pointed grimly toward the overturned chair. Lapierre righted the chair, and as he sank into it, Chloe, who had stared dumbfounded upon the scene, saw that little beads of sweat stood out sharply against the pallor of his bloodless brow. As from a great distance the words of the Louchoux girl fell upon her ears. She was speaking rapidly, and the finger which she pointed at Lapierre trembled violently.
"You lied!" cried the girl. "You have always lied! You lied when you told me we were married. You lied when you said you would return! Since coming to this school I have learned much. Many things have I learned that I never knew before. When you said you would return, I believed you--even as my mother believed my father when he went away in the ship many years ago, and left me a babe in arms to live or to die among the teepees of the Louchoux, the people of my mother, who was the mother of his child. My mother has not been to the school, and she believes some day my father will return. For many years she has waited, has starved, and has suffered--always watching for my father's return. And the factors have laughed, and the rivermen taunted her with being the mother of a fatherless child! Ah, she has paid! Always the Indian women must pay! And I have paid also. All my life have I been hungry, and in the winter I have always been cold.
"Then you came with your laughing lips and your words of love and I went with you, and you took me to distant rivers. All through the summer there was plenty to eat in our teepee. I was happy, and for the first time in my life my heart was glad--for I loved you! And then came the winter, and the freezing up of the rivers, and the day you told me you must return to the southward--to the land of the white men--without me. And I believed you even when they told me you would not return. I was brave--for that is the way of love, to believe, and to hope, and to be brave."
The girl's voice faltered, and the trembling hand gripped the back of the chair upon which she leaned heavily for support.