t did not leave him
when they walked over the tundra together toward Sokwenna's cabin. It
was a puzzling thrill, stirring an emotion which it was impossible for
him to subdue or explain; something which he knew he should understand
but could not. And it seemed to him that knowledge of this mystery was
in the girl's face, glowing in a gentle embarrassment, as she told him
she had been expecting him, and that Keok and Nawadlook had given up the
cabin to them, so that he might question her uninterrupted. But with
this soft flush of her uneasiness, revealing itself in her eyes and
cheeks, he saw neither fear nor hesitation.

In the "big room" of Sokwenna's cabin, which was patterned after his
own, he sat down amid the color and delicate fragrance of masses of
flowers, and the girl seated herself near him and waited for him
to speak.

"You love flowers," he said lamely. "I want to thank you for the flowers
you placed in my cabin. And the other things."

"Flowers are a habit with me," she replied, "and I have never seen such
flowers as these. Flowers--and birds. I never dreamed that there were
so many up here."

"Nor the world," he added. "It is ignorant of Alaska."

He was looking at her, trying to understand the inexplicable something
about her. She knew what was in his mind, because the strangely
thrilling emotion that possessed him could not keep its betrayal from
his eyes. The color was fading slowly out of her cheeks; her lips grew a
little tense, yet in her attitude of suspense and of waiting there was
no longer a suspicion of embarrassment, no trace of fear, and no sign
that a moment was at hand when her confidence was on the ebb. In this
moment Alan did not think of John Graham. It seemed to him that she was
like a child again, the child who had come to him in his cabin, and who
had stood with her back against his cabin door, entreating him to
achieve the impossible; an angel, almost, with her smooth, shining hair,
her clear, beautiful eyes, her white throat which waited with its little
heart-throb for him to beat down the fragile defense which now lay in
the greater power of his own hands. The inequality of it, and the
pitilessness of what had been in his mind to say and do, together with
an inundating sense of his own brute mastery, swept over him, and in
sudden desperation he reached out his hands toward her and cried:

"Mary Standish, in God's name tell me the truth. Tell me why you have
come up here!"