to--well, he could not say it when thinking of Frona, though
she hurt him often by her unwise acts. However, he only felt such
hurts when away from her. When with her, looking into her eyes which
always looked back, or at greeting and parting pressing her hand which
always pressed honestly, it seemed certain that there was in her
nothing but goodness and truth.

And then he liked her in many different ways for many different things.
For her impulses, and for her passions which were always elevated. And
already, from breathing the Northland air, he had come to like her for
that comradeship which at first had shocked him. There were other
acquired likings, her lack of prudishness, for instance, which he awoke
one day to find that he had previously confounded with lack of modesty.
And it was only the day before that day that he drifted, before he
thought, into a discussion with her of "Camille." She had seen
Bernhardt, and dwelt lovingly on the recollection. He went home
afterwards, a dull pain gnawing at his heart, striving to reconcile
Frona with the ideal impressed upon him by his mother that innocence
was another term for ignorance. Notwithstanding, by the following day
he had worked it out and loosened another finger of the maternal grip.

He liked the flame of her hair in the sunshine, the glint of its gold
by the firelight, and the waywardness of it and the glory. He liked
her neat-shod feet and the gray-gaitered calves,--alas, now hidden in
long-skirted Dawson. He liked her for the strength of her slenderness;
and to walk with her, swinging her step and stride to his, or to merely
watch her come across a room or down the street, was a delight. Life
and the joy of life romped through her blood, abstemiously filling out
and rounding off each shapely muscle and soft curve. And he liked it
all. Especially he liked the swell of her forearm, which rose firm and
strong and tantalizing and sought shelter all too quickly under the
loose-flowing sleeve.

The co-ordination of physical with spiritual beauty is very strong in
normal men, and so it was with Vance Corliss. That he liked the one
was no reason that he failed to appreciate the other. He liked Frona
for both, and for herself as well. And to like, with him, though he
did not know it, was to love.

CHAPTER IX

Vance Corliss proceeded at a fair rate to adapt himself to the
Northland life, and he found that many adjustments came easy. While
h