it, which has come to me so conclusively here in Alaska. I almost
knew, at the last, that he was a monster, but the world had been told I
was to marry him, and Sharpleigh with his fatherly hypocrisy was behind
me, and John Graham treated me so courteously and so coolly that I did
not suspect the terrible things in his heart and mind--and I went on
with the bargain. _I married him._"

She drew a sudden, deep breath, as if she had passed through the ordeal
of what she had most dreaded to say, and now, meeting the changeless
expression of Alan's face with a fierce, little cry that leaped from her
like a flash of gun-fire, she sprang to her feet and stood with her back
crushed against the tundra flowers, her voice trembling as she
continued, while he stood up and faced her.

"You needn't go on," he interrupted in a voice so low and terribly hard
that she felt the menacing thrill of it. "You needn't. I will settle
with John Graham, if God gives me the chance."

"You would have me stop _now_--before I have told you of the only shred
of triumph to which I may lay claim!" she protested. "Oh, you may be
sure that I realize the sickening folly and wickedness of it all, but I
swear before my God that I didn't realize it then, until it was too
late. To you, Alan, clean as the great mountains and plains that have
been a part of you, I know how impossible this must seem--that I should
marry a man I at first feared, then loathed, then came to hate with a
deadly hatred; that I should sacrifice myself because I thought it was a
duty; that I should be so weak, so ignorant, so like soft clay in the
hands of those I trusted. Yet I tell you that at no time did I think or
suspect that I was sacrificing _myself_; at no time, blind though you
may call me, did I see a hint of that sickening danger into which I was
voluntarily going. No, not even an hour before the wedding did I suspect
that, for it had all been so coldly planned, like a great deal in
finance--so carefully adjudged by us all as a business affair, that I
felt no fear except that sickness of soul which comes of giving up one's
life. And no hint of it came until the last of the few words were spoken
which made us man and wife, and then I saw in John Graham's eyes
something which I had never seen there before. And Sharpleigh--"

Her hands caught at her breast. Her gray eyes were pools of flame.

"I went to my room. I didn't lock my door, because never had it been
necessary to do