f
my hair for you if they found me."

He nodded. "When I sat across the table from you aboard the _Nome_, I
worshiped it and didn't know it. And since then--since I've had you
here--every time. I've looked at you--" He stopped, choking the words
back in his throat.

"Say it, Alan."

"I've wanted to see it down," he finished desperately. "Silly notion,
isn't it?"

"Why is it?" she asked, her eyes widening a little. "If you love it, why
is it a silly notion to want to see it down?"

"Why, I though possibly you might think it so," he added lamely.

Never had he heard anything sweeter than her laughter as she turned
suddenly from him, so that the glow of the fallen sun was at her back,
and with deft, swift fingers began loosening the coils of her hair until
its radiant masses tumbled about her, streaming down her back in a
silken glory that awed him with its beauty and drew from his lips a cry
of gladness.

She faced him, and in her eyes was the shining softness that glowed in
her hair. "Do you think it is nice, Alan?"

He went to her and filled his hands with the heavy tresses and pressed
them to his lips and face.

Thus he stood when he felt the sudden shiver that ran through her. It
was like a little shock. He heard the catch of her breath, and the hand
which she had placed gently on his bowed head fell suddenly away. When
he raised his head to look at her, she was staring past him into the
deepening twilight of the tundra, and it seemed as if something had
stricken her so that for a space she was powerless to speak or move.

"What is it?" he cried, and whirled about, straining his eyes to see
what had alarmed her; and as he looked, a deep, swift shadow sped over
the earth, darkening the mellow twilight until it was somber gloom of
night--and the midnight sun went out like a great, luminous lamp as a
dense wall of purple cloud rolled up in an impenetrable curtain between
it and the arctic world. Often he had seen this happen in the approach
of summer storm on the tundras, but never had the change seemed so swift
as now. Where there had been golden light, he saw his companion's face
now pale in a sea of dusk. It was this miracle of arctic night, its
suddenness and unexpectedness, that had startled her, he thought, and he
laughed softly.

But her hand clutched his arm. "I saw them," she cried, her voice
breaking. "I saw them--out there against the sun--before the cloud
came--and some of them were running, li