nd then in silence returned Linday's gaze.

"Why don't you speak?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "What is the use? You know it is Rex
Strang."

"Thank you. Though I might remind you that it is the first time I have
ever seen him. Sit down." He waved her to a stool, himself taking the
bench. "I'm really about all in, you know. There's no turnpike from the
Yukon here."

He drew a penknife and began extracting a thorn from his thumb.

"What are you going to do?" she asked, after a minute's wait.

"Eat and rest up before I start back."

"What are you going to do about...." She inclined her head toward the
unconscious man.

"Nothing."

She went over to the bunk and rested her fingers lightly on the
tight-curled hair.

"You mean you will kill him," she said slowly. "Kill him by doing
nothing, for you can save him if you will."

"Take it that way." He considered a moment, and stated his thought with
a harsh little laugh. "From time immemorial in this weary old world it
has been a not uncommon custom so to dispose of wife-stealers."

"You are unfair, Grant," she answered gently. "You forget that I was
willing and that I desired. I was a free agent. Rex never stole me. It
was you who lost me. I went with him, willing and eager, with song on my
lips. As well accuse me of stealing him. We went together."

"A good way of looking at it," Linday conceded. "I see you are as keen a
thinker as ever, Madge. That must have bothered him."

"A keen thinker can be a good lover--"

"And not so foolish," he broke in.

"Then you admit the wisdom of my course?"

He threw up his hands. "That's the devil of it, talking with clever
women. A man always forgets and traps himself. I wouldn't wonder if you
won him with a syllogism."

Her reply was the hint of a smile in her straight-looking blue eyes and
a seeming emanation of sex pride from all the physical being of her.

"No, I take that back, Madge. If you'd been a numbskull you'd have won
him, or any one else, on your looks, and form, and carriage. I ought to
know. I've been through that particular mill, and, the devil take me,
I'm not through it yet."

His speech was quick and nervous and irritable, as it always was, and,
as she knew, it was always candid. She took her cue from his last
remark.

"Do you remember Lake Geneva?"

"I ought to. I was rather absurdly happy."

She nodded, and her eyes were luminous. "There is such a thing as old
sake. Won't you, Grant, pleas