love you?" he went on, taking her white face between his two hands.
"Don't you understand, Meleese? Jean and I have fought--he is bound hand
and foot up there in the cabin--and I am waiting for you--for you--" He
pressed her face against him, her lips so close that he could feel
their quavering breath. "I have come to fight for you--if you won't go,"
he whispered tensely. "I don't know why your people have tried to kill
me, I don't know why they want to kill me, and it makes no difference to
me now. I want you. I've wanted you since that first glimpse of your
face through the window, since the fight on the trail--every minute,
every hour, and I won't give you up as long as I'm alive. If you won't
go with me--if you won't go now--to-night--" He held her closer, his
voice trembling in her hair. "If you won't go--I'm going to stay
with you!"

There was a thrillingly decisive note in his last words, a note that
carried with it more than all he had said before, and as Meleese partly
drew away from him again she gave a sharp cry of protest.

"No--no--no--" she panted, her hands clutching at his arm. "You must go
back now--now--" She pushed him toward the door, and as he backed a
step, looking down into her face, he saw the choking tremble of her
white throat, heard again the fluttering terror in her breath. "They
will kill you if they find you here," she urged. "They think you are
dead--that you fell through the ice and were drowned. If you don't
believe me, if you don't believe that I can never go with you,
tell Jean--"

Her words seemed to choke her as she struggled to finish.

"Tell Jean what?" he questioned softly.

"Will you go--then?" she cried with sobbing eagerness, as if
he already understood her. "Will you go back if Jean tells you
everything--everything about me--about--"

"No," he interrupted.

"If you only knew--then you would go back, and never see me again. You
would understand--"

"I will never understand," He interrupted again. "I say that it is you
who do not understand, Meleese! I don't care what Jean would tell me.
Nothing that has ever happened can make me not want you. Don't you
understand? Nothing, I say--nothing that has happened--that can ever
happen--unless--"

For a moment he stopped, looking straight into her eyes.

"Nothing--nothing in the world, Meleese," he repeated almost in a
whisper, "unless you did not tell me the truth back on the trail at
Wekusko when you said that it was no