A face like that into which Philip looked might have come to him
from out of some dream of paradise. It was a girl's face. Eyes of
the pure blue of the sky above met his own. Her lips were a little
parted and a little laughing. Before he had uttered a word, before
he could rise out of the stupidity of his wonder, the change came.
A fear that he could not have forgotten if he had lived through a
dozen centuries leaped into the lovely eyes. The half-laughing
lips grew tense with terror. Quick as the flash of powder there
had come into her face a look that was not that of one merely
startled. It was fear--horror--a great, gripping thing that for an
instant seemed to crush the life from her soul. In another moment
it was gone, and she swayed back against the face of the rock,
clutching a hand at her breast.
"My God, how I frightened you!" gasped Philip.
"Yes, you frightened me," she said.
Her white throat was bare, and he could see the throb of it as she
made a strong effort to speak steadily. Her eyes did not leave
him. As he advanced a step he saw that unconsciously she cringed
closer to the rock.
"You are not afraid--now?" he asked. "I wouldn't have frightened
you for the world. And sooner than hurt you I'd--I'd kill myself.
I just stumbled here by accident. And I haven't seen a white
woman--for two years. So I stared--stared--and stood there like a
fool."
Relief shot into her eyes at his words.
"Two years? What do you mean?"
"I've been up along the rim of h--I mean the Arctic, on a
government wild-goose chase," he explained. "And I'm just coming
down."
"You're from the North?"
There was an eager emphasis in her question.
"Yes. Straight from Coronation Gulf. I ran ashore to cook a mess
of prunes. While the water was boiling I came down here after a
bear, and found YOU! My name is Philip Weyman; I haven't even an
Indian with me, and there are three things in the world I'd trade
that name for just now: One is pie, another is doughnuts, and the
third--"
She brushed back her hair, and the fear went from her eyes as she
looked at him.
"And the third?" she asked.
"Is the answer to a question," he finished. "How do YOU happen to
be here, six hundred miles from anywhere?"
She stepped out from the rock. And now he saw that she was almost
as tall as himself, and that she was as slim as a reed and as
beautifully poised as the wild narcissus that sways like music to
every call of the wind. She had tucked up her sleeves, baring her
round white arms close to the shoulders, and as she looked
steadily at him before answering his question she flung back the
shining masses of her hair and began to braid it. Her fear for him
was entirely gone. She was calm. And there was something in the
manner of her quiet and soul-deep study of him that held back
other words which he might have spoken.
In those few moments she had taken her place in his life. She
stood before him like a goddess, tall and slender and unafraid,
her head a gold-brown aureole, her face filled with a purity, a
beauty, and a STRENGTH that made him look at her speechless,
waiting for the sound of her voice. In her look there was neither
boldness nor suspicion. Her eyes were clear, deep pools of velvety
blue that defied him to lie to her, He felt that under those eyes
he could have knelt down upon the sand and emptied his soul of its
secrets for their inspection.
"It is not very strange that I should be here" she said at last.
"I have always lived here. It is my home."
"Yes, I believe that," breathed Philip. "It is the last thing in
the world that one would believe--but I do; I believe it.
Something--I don't know what--told me that you belonged to this
world as you stood there beside the rock. But I don't understand.
A thousand miles from a city--and you! It's unreal. It's almost
like the dreams I've been dreaming during the past eighteen
months, and the visions I've seen during that long, maddening
night up on the coast, when for five months we didn't see a glow
of the sun. But--you understand--it's hard to comprehend."
From her he glanced swiftly over the rocks of the coulee, as if
expecting to see some sign of the home she had spoken of, or at
least of some other human presence. She understood his questioning
look. "I am alone," she said.
The quality of her voice startled him more then her words. There
was a deeper, darker glow in her eyes as she watched their effect
upon him. She swept out a gleaming white arm, still moist with the
water of the pool, taking in the wide, autumn-tinted spaces about
them.
"I am alone," she repeated, still keeping her eyes on his face.
"Entirely alone. That is why you startled me--why I was afraid.
This is my hiding-place, and I thought--"
He saw that she had spoken words that she would have recalled. She
hesitated. Her lips trembled. In that moment of suspense a little
gray ermine dislodged a stone from the rock ridge above them, and
at the sound of it as it struck behind her the girl gave a start,
and a quick flash of the old fear leaped for an instant into her
face. And now Philip beheld something in her which he had been too
bewildered and wonder-struck to observe before. Her first terror
had been so acute that he had failed to see what remained after
her fright had passed. But it was clear to him now, and the look
that came into his own face told her that he had made the
discovery.
The beauty of her face, her eyes, her hair--the wonder of her
presence six hundred miles from civilization--had held him
spellbound. He had seen only the deep lustre and the wonderful
blue of her eyes. Now he saw that those eyes, exquisite in their
loveliness, were haunted by something which she was struggling to
fight back--a questing, hunted look that burned there steadily,
and of which he was not the cause. A deep-seated grief, a terror
far back, shone through the forced calmness with which she was
speaking to him. He knew that she was fighting with herself, that
the nervously twitching fingers at her breast told more than her
lips had confessed. He stepped nearer to her and held out a hand,
and when he spoke his voice was vibrant with the thing that made
men respect him and women have faith in him.
"Tell me--what you started to say," he entreated quietly. "This is
your hiding-place, and you thought--what? I think that I can
guess. You thought that I was some one else, whom you have reason
to fear."
She did not answer. It was as if she had not yet completely
measured him. Her eyes told him that. They were not looking AT
him, but INTO him. And they were softly beautiful as wood violets.
He found himself looking steadily into them--close, so close that
he could have reached out and touched her. Slowly there came over
them a filmy softness. And then, marvellously, he saw the tears
gathering, as dew might gather over the sweet petals of a flower.
And still for a moment she did not speak. There came a little
quiver at her throat, and she caught herself with a quick, soft
breath.
"Yes, I thought you were some one else--whom I fear," she said
then. "But why should I tell you? You are from down there, from
what you please to call civilization. I should distrust you
because of that. So why--why should I tell you?"
In an instant Philip was at her side. In his rough, storm-beaten
hand he caught the white fingers that trembled at her breast. And
there was something about him now that made her completely
unafraid.
"Why?" he asked. "Listen, and I will tell you. Four years ago I
came up into this country from down there--the world they call
Civilization. I came up with every ideal and every dream I ever
had broken and crushed. And up here I found God's Country. I found
new ideals and new dreams. I am going back with them. But they can
never be broken as the others were--because--now--I have found
something that will make them live. And that something is YOU!
Don't let my words startle you. I mean them to be as pure as the
sun that shines over our heads. If I leave you now--if I never see
you again--you will have filled this wonderful world for me. And
if I could do something to prove this--to make you happier--why,
I'd thank God for having sent me ashore to cook a mess of prunes."
He released her hand, and stepped back from her.
"That is why you should tell me," he finished.
A swift change had come into her eyes and face. She was breathing
quickly. He saw the sudden throbbing of her throat. A flush of
colour had mounted into her cheeks. Her lips were parted, her eyes
shone like stars.
"You would do a great deal for me?" she questioned breathlessly.
"A great deal--and like--A MAN?"
"Yes."
"A MAN--one of God's men?" she repeated.
He bowed his head.
Slowly, so slowly that she scarcely seemed to move, she drew
nearer to him.
"And when you had done this you would be willing to go away, to
promise never to see me again, to ask no reward? You would swear
that?"
Her hand touched his arm. Her breath came tense and fast as she
waited for him to answer. "If you wished it, yes," he said.
"I almost believe," he heard, as if she were speaking the words to
herself. She turned to him again, and something of faith, of hope
transfigured her face.
"Return to your fire and your prunes," she said quickly, and the
sunlight of a smile passed over her lips. "Then, half an hour from
now, come up the coulee to the turn in the rocks. You will find me
there."
She bent quickly and picked up the little bag and the brush from
the sand. Without looking at him again she sped swiftly beyond the
big rock, and Philip's last vision of her was the radiant glory of
her hair as it rippled cloudlike behind her in the sunlight.