en she reached the top she found a camp-fire glowing above the ashes
of past flames. Gregg had preceded her and at her coming he tossed his
old blanket coat to the tundra for her to sit upon. He took his place
beside her. Their usual gay exchange of badinage had failed them
tonight. For a time they sat silent, with arm-clasped knees, looking
into the vermilion heart of the fire. All day the shadow of
approaching separation had weighed the spirits of each with heartache
and anxiety. Yet each knew that in this hour tonight there was some
potent quality, some indefinable magnetic thing that seemed to charge
the air with sweetly mysterious emotions.

People of the cities, worn with the artificialities of civilization
feel the need of some powerful stimulus to arouse emotion: Love is
often born of the wine cup and a dusky, cushioned corner; of music; of
the dance. When the glamour of these is removed--love dies. But
inborn in the heart of every man is a love-dream--a dream of some day
finding that mate who shall battle cheerfully side by side with him
against environment; that mate whose courage, whose understanding,
whose faith shall enable him to laugh at the buffetings of Fate and go
unafraid down the years with the light of dreams in his eyes.

Perhaps with Jean and Gregg it was the subconscious knowledge of the
fulfillment of this universal dream that kept them happy during all the
lean months on Kon Klayu. They had shared elemental things; together
they had hunted food that they might live, battled against storms,
endured hardships. Together they had sung and laughed and made a
playtime of it all, and slowly there had grown up between them a love
as clean and wholesome as the summer winds that swept the tundra of
their Island. Hitherto they had felt no need of caresses or words to
express their joy in one another. They had been happy as children are
happy, with no thought of tomorrow. They had parted each night knowing
that morning would bring them together again. But now . . .

Jean, looking into the flame of the fire, dropped her chin in her
cupped hands. Incongruously, it seemed to her, at that instant there
flashed into her mind the memory of a day on an Island trail, when she
and Gregg had come suddenly on a sea vista of heart-stopping beauty.
His eyes had sought hers in quick, silent appreciation of it. She
could not tell why this simple incident should suddenly seem so
intangibly beautiful, but