There was a warm glow in her face, and something beautifully soft and sweet in her eyes which she did not try to keep away from him.  It made him forget the cottonwoods and the plains beyond, and his caution, and Sokwenna’s advice to guard carefully against the hiding-places of Ghost Kloof and the country beyond.

“I have been thinking a great deal today,” she was saying, “because you have left me so much alone.  I have been thinking of you.  And—­my thoughts have given me a wonderful happiness.”

“And I have been—­in paradise,” he replied.

“You do not think that I am wicked?”

“I could sooner believe the sun would never come up again.”

“Nor that I have been unwomanly?”

“You are my dream of all that is glorious in womanhood.”

“Yet I have followed you—­have thrust myself at you, fairly at your head, Alan.”

“For which I thank God,” He breathed devoutly.

“And I have told you that I love you, and you have taken me in your arms, and have kissed me—­”

“Yes.”

“And I am walking now with my hand in yours—­”

“And will continue to do so, if I can hold it.”

“And I am another man’s wife,” she shuddered.

“You are mine,” he declared doggedly.  “You know it, and the Almighty God knows it.  It is blasphemy to speak of yourself as Graham’s wife.  You are legally entangled with him, and that is all.  Heart and soul and body you are free.”

“No, I am not free.”

“But you are!”

And then, after a moment, she whispered at his shoulder:  “Alan, because you are the finest gentleman in all the world, I will tell you why I am not.  It is because—­heart and soul—­I belong to you.”

He dared not look at her, and feeling the struggle within him Mary Standish looked straight ahead with a wonderful smile on her lips and repeated softly, “Yes, the very finest gentleman in all the world!”

Over the breasts of the tundra and the hollows between they went, still hand in hand, and found themselves talking of the colorings in the sky, and the birds, and flowers, and the twilight creeping in about them, while Alan scanned the shortening horizons for a sign of human life.  One mile, and then another, and after that a third, and they were looking into gray gloom far ahead, where lay the kloof.

It was strange that he should think of the letter now—­the letter he had written to Ellen McCormick—­but think of it he did, and said what was in his mind to Mary Standish, who was also looking with him into the wall of gloom that lay between them and the distant cottonwoods.

“It seemed to me that I was not writing it to her, but to you” he said.  “And I think that if you hadn’t come back to me I would have gone mad.”

“I have the letter.  It is here”—­and she placed a hand upon her breast.  “Do you remember what you wrote, Alan?”