magnetism.
Something far down in the depths of him responded to that something in
her. It was as though he felt the white soul of her rising transcendent
over her body. It spoke in her pose, her eloquent face, and it filled the
brief silence with an insistent, almost vibrant appeal.

"They are," he answered, and the emotion in his own face played softly
through his voice, "I am sure that they are. Weatherbee had other friends,
plenty of them, scattered from the Yukon territory to Nome; men who would
have been glad to go out of their way to serve him, if they had known; but
he never asked anything of them; he saved the right to call on me. Neither
of us ever came as near that 'ragged edge of things' as he did, toppled on
it as he did, for so long. There never was a braver fight, against greater
odds, single-handed, yet I failed him." He paused while his eyes again
sought that high gorge of the Olympic Mountains, then added: "The most I
can do now is to see that his work is carried on."

"You mean," she said not quite steadily, "you are going to buy that land?"

"I mean"--he frowned a little--"I am going to renew my offer to finance
the project for you. You owe it to David Weatherbee even more than I do.
Go back to that pocket; set his desert blossoming. It's your only
salvation."

She groped for the bulwark behind her and moved back to its support. "I
could not. I could not. I should go mad in that terrible place."

"Listen, madam." He said this very gently, but his voice carried its
vibrant undernote as though down beneath the surface a waiting reserve
force stirred. "I did not tell all about that orchard of spruce twigs. It
was planted along a bench, the miniature of the one we climbed in the
Wenatchee Mountains, that was crossed with tiny, frozen, irrigating canals
leading from a basin; and midway stood a house. You must have known that
trick he had of carving small things with his pocket-knife. Then imagine
that delicately modeled house of snow. It was the nucleus of the whole,
and before the door, fine as a cameo and holding a bundle in her arms, was
set the image of a woman."

There was a silent moment. She waited, leaning a little forward, watching
Tisdale's face, while a sort of incredulous surprise rose through the
despair in her eyes. "There were women at Fairbanks and Seward after the
first year," he went on. "Bright, refined women who would have counted it
a privilege to share things, his hardest luck, w