a lawless gleam in the narrow eyes he turned on
her and she was not unaware of a certain savage, picturesque appeal in
him. She felt again a strange, undesired impulse that had troubled her
ever since her first meeting with the man--the urge to go close and
look deep into his pale, hypnotic eyes.

"On nights like this, Mrs. Boreland," he said, his tones low, almost
caressing, "I always think of those lines--perhaps you know them:

"'Press close, magnetic, nourishing Night!
Night of the South Winds! Night of the few large stars!
Still, nodding Night. Mad, naked summer night!'" . . .

Despite herself, Ellen thrilled under the magic of his voice. He went
on: "It's the memory of such nights that bring me back to this country
year after year, and then . . . when I return . . . there is only the
mocking beauty of their loneliness."

Ellen knew but little of the "good, grey poet," but at the incongruity
of his quoting she gazed with a new curiosity at this tall figure in
the heathen splendor of a Thlinget witch-doctor.

"To be satisfying," he said softly, "beauty like this must be shared
with a loved woman. . . ." his sweeping gesture indicating the moonlit
bay of Katleean. "You are the first white woman to share it with me."

He stepped closer to her. Though there were three feet between them
she felt his presence as a tangible thing. She stirred uneasily. The
dull throb of the drums filled a moment's space.

"I have loved many women," his low voice went on, "women--of a
sort--but never anyone like. . . ." There was something tenderly
personal in the omitted word. "Sometimes . . . I wonder . . . if I
might not be a better man if I had someone like you to stand beside me
when winter nights come, and watch the Northern Lights. . . ."

Kilbuck looked dreamily away toward the peaks raising their subtle
loveliness to the stars. Doubtless he must have said the same things
slightly varied to many women in the States, but never before had
Nature provided such a setting for his posing. Doubtless it had always
made a favorable appeal, for Ellen knew that man, though doing exactly
as he pleases, is ever holding out his hand to woman to be uplifted,
and the mother instinct in the feminine heart seldom fails to respond.

Ellen felt suddenly that the situation was getting beyond her. As she
leaned against the canoe she tried in vain to think of some ordinary
thing which would change the current of the White C