“No, it wasn’t Stampede,” she said.  “He didn’t tell me.  It—­just happened.  And after this letter—­you still believe in me?”

“I must.  I should be unhappy if I did not.  And I am—­most perversely hoping for happiness.  I have told myself that what I saw over John Graham’s signature was a lie.”

“It wasn’t that—­quite.  But it didn’t refer to you, or to me.  It was part of a letter written to Rossland.  He sent me some books while I was on the ship, and inadvertently left a page of this letter in one of them as a marker.  It was really quite unimportant, when one read the whole of it.  The other half of the page is in the toe of the slipper which you did not return to Ellen McCormick.  You know that is the conventional thing for a woman to do—­to use paper for padding in a soft-toed slipper.”

He wanted to shout; he wanted to throw up his arms and laugh as Tautuk and Amuk Toolik and a score of others had laughed to the beat of the tom-toms last night, not because he was amused, but out of sheer happiness.  But Mary Standish’s voice, continuing in its quiet and matter-of-fact way, held him speechless, though she could not fail to see the effect upon him of this simple explanation of the presence of Graham’s letter.

“I was in Nawadlook’s room when I saw Stampede pick up the wad of paper from the floor,” she was saying.  “I was looking at the slipper a few minutes before, regretting that you had left its mate in my cabin on the ship, and the paper must have dropped then.  I saw Stampede read it, and the shock that came in his face.  Then he placed it on the table and went out.  I hurried to see what he had found and had scarcely read the few words when I heard him returning.  I returned the paper where he had laid it, hid myself in Nawadlook’s room, and saw Stampede when he carried it to you.  I don’t know why I allowed it to be done.  I had no reason.  Maybe it was just—­intuition, and maybe it was because—­just in that hour—­I so hated myself that I wanted someone to flay me alive, and I thought that what Stampede had found would make you do it.  And I deserve it!  I deserve nothing better at your hands.”

“But it isn’t true,” he protested.  “The letter was to Rossland.”

There was no responsive gladness in her eyes.  “Better that it were true, and all that is true were false,” she said in a quiet, hopeless voice.  “I would almost give my life to be no more than what those words implied, dishonest, a spy, a criminal of a sort; almost any alternative would I accept in place of what I actually am.  Do you begin to understand?”

“I am afraid—­I can not.”  Even as he persisted in denial, the pain which had grown like velvety dew in her eyes clutched at his heart, and he felt dread of what lay behind it.  “I understand—­only—­that I am glad you are here, more glad than yesterday, or this morning, or an hour ago.”

She bowed her head, so that the bright light of day made a radiance of rich color in her hair, and he saw the sudden tremble of the shining lashes that lay against her cheeks; and then, quickly, she caught her breath, and her hands grew steady in her lap.