petticoat and a pair of fine stockings on an ankle as shapely as she had
ever seen among all the white women she knew. She drew herself up with
pride, and her body had a grace and ease which the white woman's
convention had not cramped.

Yet, with all her protests, no one would have thought her English.
She might have been Spanish, or Italian, or Roumanian, or Slav, though
nothing of her Indian blood showed in purely Indian characteristics, and
something sparkled in her, gave a radiance to her face and figure which
the storm and struggle in her did not smother. The white women of
Portage la Drome were too blind, too prejudiced, to see all that she
really was, and admiring white men could do little, for Pauline would
have nothing to do with them till the women met her absolutely as an
equal; and from the other halfbreeds, who intermarried with each other
and were content to take a lower place than the pure whites, she held
aloof, save when any of them was ill or in trouble. Then she recognised
the claim of race, and came to their doors with pity and soft impulses to
help them. French and Scotch and English half-breeds, as they were, they
understood how she was making a fight for all who were half-Indian, half-
white, and watched her with a furtive devotion, acknowledging her
superior place, and proud of it.

"I will not stay here," said the Indian mother with sullen stubbornness.
"I will go back beyond the Warais. My life is my own life, and I will do
what I like with it."

The girl started, but became composed again on the instant. "Is your
life all your own, mother?" she asked. "I did not come into the world
of my own will. If I had I would have come all white or all Indian. I
am your daughter, and I am here, good or bad--is your life all your own?"