he way she looked at him,
as if he had become a menace from which she would run if he had not
taken the strength from her. As she stood there, her parted lips showing
the red of his kisses, her shining hair almost undone, he held out his
hands mutely.

"You think--I came here for _that?_" she panted.

"No," he said. "Forgive me. I am sorry."

It was not anger that he saw in her face. It was, instead, a mingling of
shock and physical hurt; a measurement of him now, as she looked at him,
which recalled her to him as she had stood that night with her back
against his cabin door. Yet he was not trying to piece things together.
Even subconsciously that was impossible, for all life in him was
centered in the one stupendous thought that she was not dead, but
living, and he did not wonder why. There was no question in his mind as
to the manner in which she had been saved from the sea. He felt a
weakness in his limbs; he wanted to laugh, to cry out, to give himself
up to strange inclinations for a moment or two, like a woman. Such was
the shock of his happiness. It crept in a living fluid through his
flesh. She saw it in the swift change of the rock-like color in his
face, and his quicker breathing, and was a little amazed, but Alan was
too completely possessed by the one great thing to discover the
astonishment growing in her eyes.

"You are alive," he said, giving voice again to the one thought pounding
in his brain. "_Alive!_"

It seemed to him that word wanted to utter itself an impossible number
of times. Then the truth that was partly dawning came entirely to
the girl.

"Mr. Holt, you did not receive my letter at Nome?" she asked.

"Your letter? At Nome?" He repeated the words, shaking his head. "No."

"And all this time--you have been thinking--I was dead?"

He nodded, because the thickness in his throat made it the easier form
of speech.

"I wrote you there," she said. "I wrote the letter before I jumped into
the sea. It went to Nome with Captain Rifle's ship."

"I didn't get it."

"You didn't get it?" There was wonderment in her voice, and then, if he
had observed it, understanding.

"Then you didn't mean that just now? You didn't intend to do it? It was
because you had blamed yourself for my death, and it was a great relief
to find me alive. That was it, wasn't it?"

Stupidly he nodded again. "Yes, it was a great relief."

"You see, I had faith in you even when you wouldn't help me," she went
on. "S