“You opened both?”

“Of course.  One was to be read immediately, the other when I was found—­and I had found myself.  Maybe it wasn’t exactly fair, but you couldn’t expect two women to resist a temptation like that.  And—­I wanted to know.”

She did not lower her eyes or turn her head aside as she made the confession.  Her gaze met Alan’s with beautiful steadiness.

“And then I believed.  I knew, because of what you said in that letter, that you were the one man in all the world who would help me and give me a fighting chance if I came to you.  But it has taken all my courage—­and in the end you will drive me away—­”

Again he looked upon the miracle of tears in wide-open, unfaltering eyes, tears which she did not brush away, but through which, in a moment, she smiled at him as no woman had ever smiled at him before.  And with the tears there seemed to possess her a pride which lifted her above all confusion, a living spirit of will and courage and womanhood that broke away the dark clouds of suspicion and fear that had gathered in his mind.  He tried to speak, and his lips were thick.

“You have come—­because you know I love you, and you—­”

“Because, from the beginning, it must have been a great faith in you that inspired me, Alan Holt.”

“There must have been more than that,” he persisted.  “Some other reason.”

“Two,” she acknowledged, and now he noticed that with the dissolution of tears a flush of color was returning into her cheeks.

“And those—­”

“One it is impossible for you to know; the other, if I tell you, will make you despise me.  I am sure of that.”

“It has to do with John Graham?”

She bowed her head.  “Yes, with John Graham.”

For the first time long lashes hid her eyes from him, and for a moment it seemed that her resolution was gone and she stood stricken by the import of the thing that lay behind his question; yet her cheeks flamed red instead of paling, and when she looked at him again, her eyes burned with a lustrous fire.

“John Graham,” she repeated.  “The man you hate and want to kill.”

Slowly he turned toward the door.  “I am leaving immediately after dinner to inspect the herds up in the foothills,” he said.  “And you—­are welcome here.”

He caught the swift intake of her breath as he paused for an instant at the door, and saw the new light that leaped into her eyes.

“Thank you, Alan Holt,” she cried softly, “Oh, I thank you!!”

And then, suddenly, she stopped him with a little cry, as if at last something had broken away from her control.  He faced her, and for a moment they stood in silence.

“I’m sorry—­sorry I said to you what I did that night on the Nome,” she said.  “I accused you of brutality, of unfairness, of—­of even worse than that, and I want to take it all back.  You are big and clean and splendid, for you would go away now, knowing I am poisoned by an association with the man who has injured you so terribly, and you say I am welcome! And I don’t want you to go.  You have made me want to tell you who I am, and why I have come to you, and I pray God you will think as kindly of me as you can when you have heard.”