roughly, about
her, when the sharp crackle of a match startled him to himself. Winapie,
alien to the scene, was lighting the slow wick of the slush lamp. She
appeared to start out against a background of utter black, and the flame,
flaring suddenly up, lighted her bronze beauty to royal gold.

"You see, it is impossible," he groaned, thrusting the fair-haired woman
gently from him. "It is impossible," he repeated. "It is impossible."

"I am not a girl, Dave, with a girl's illusions," she said softly, though
not daring to come back to him. "It is as a woman that I understand. Men
are men. A common custom of the country. I am not shocked. I divined
it from the first. But--ah!--it is only a marriage of the country--not a
real marriage?"

"We do not ask such questions in Alaska," he interposed feebly.

"I know, but--"

"Well, then, it is only a marriage of the country--nothing else."

"And there are no children?"

"No."

"Nor--"

"No, no; nothing--but it is impossible."

"But it is not." She was at his side again, her hand touching lightly,
caressingly, the sunburned back of his. "I know the custom of the land
too well. Men do it every day. They do not care to remain here, shut
out from the world, for all their days; so they give an order on the P.
C. C. Company for a year's provisions, some money in hand, and the girl
is content. By the end of that time, a man--" She shrugged her
shoulders. "And so with the girl here. We will give her an order upon
the company, not for a year, but for life. What was she when you found
her? A raw, meat-eating savage; fish in summer, moose in winter,
feasting in plenty, starving in famine. But for you that is what she
would have remained. For your coming she was happier; for your going,
surely, with a life of comparative splendor assured, she will be happier
than if you had never been."

"No, no," he protested. "It is not right."

"Come, Dave, you must see. She is not your kind. There is no race
affinity. She is an aborigine, sprung from the soil, yet close to the
soil, and impossible to lift from the soil. Born savage, savage she will
die. But we--you and I--the dominant, evolved race--the salt of the
earth and the masters thereof! We are made for each other. The supreme
call is of kind, and we are of kind. Reason and feeling dictate it. Your
very instinct demands it. That you cannot deny. You cannot escape the
generations behind you. Yours