"He is to be your husband; nay, it is the wish of your father, and the great sachems approve it."
"Can the sachems put love in my heart? Can the sachems make my heart receive him as its lord? Ah, this bitter custom of the father giving his daughter to whomsoever he will, as if she were a dog! And your lips sanction it!"
Her eyes were full of tears. Scarcely realizing what he did, he tried to take her hand. The slender fingers shrank from his and were drawn away.
"I do not sanction it, it is a bitter custom; but it is to be, and I only wished to smooth your pathway. I want to say or do something that will help you when I am gone."
"Do you know what it would be for me to be an Indian s wife? To cut the wood, and carry the water, and prepare the food, that would be sweet to do for one I loved. But to toil amid dirt and filth for a savage whom I could only abhor, to feel myself growing coarse and squalid with my surround ings, I could not live!"
She shuddered as she spoke, as if the very thought was horrible.
"You hate this degraded Indian life as much as I do, and yet it is the life you would push me into," she continued, in a tone of mournful heart-broken reproach. It stung him keenly.
"It is not the life I would push you into. God knows I would give my life to take one thorn from yours." The mad longing within him rushed into his voice in spite of himself, making it thrill with a passionate tenderness that brought the color back into her pallid cheek. "But I cannot remain," he
