“In which event, of course, your eyes would not suffer.”

“Probably not.”

“Have they ever suffered?”

“I think not.”

“When looking at the Thlinkit girls, for instance?”

“I haven’t seen them.”

She gave her shoulders a little shrug.

“Ordinarily I would think you most uninteresting, Mr. Holt.  As it is I think you unusual.  And I rather like you for it.  Would you mind taking me to my cabin?  It is number sixteen, on this deck.”

She walked with her fingers touching his arm again.  “What is your room?” she asked.

“Twenty-seven, Miss Standish.”

“This deck?”

“Yes.”

Not until she had said good night, quietly and without offering him her hand, did the intimacy of her last questions strike him.  He grunted and lighted a fresh cigar.  A number of things occurred to him all at once, as he slowly made a final round or two of the deck.  Then he went to his cabin and looked over papers which were going ashore at Juneau.  These were memoranda giving an account of his appearance with Carl Lomen before the Ways and Means Committee at Washington.

It was nearly midnight when he had finished.  He wondered if Mary Standish was asleep.  He was a little irritated, and slightly amused, by the recurring insistency with which his mind turned to her.  She was a clever girl, he admitted.  He had asked her nothing about herself, and she had told him nothing, while he had been quite garrulous.  He was a little ashamed when he recalled how he had unburdened his mind to a girl who could not possibly be interested in the political affairs of John Graham and Alaska.  Well, it was not entirely his fault.  She had fairly catapulted herself upon him, and he had been decent under the circumstances, he thought.

He put out his light and stood with his face at the open port-hole.  Only the soft throbbing of the vessel as she made her way slowly through the last of the Narrows into Frederick Sound came to his ears.  The ship, at last, was asleep.  The moon was straight overhead, no longer silhouetting the mountains, and beyond its misty rim of light the world was dark.  Out of this darkness, rising like a deeper shadow, Alan could make out faintly the huge mass of Kupreanof Island.  And he wondered, knowing the perils of the Narrows in places scarcely wider than the length of the ship, why Captain Rifle had chosen this course instead of going around by Cape Decision.  He could feel that the land was more distant now, but the Nome was still pushing ahead under slow bell, and he could smell the fresh odor of kelp, and breathe deeply of the scent of forests that came from both east and west.

Suddenly his ears became attentive to slowly approaching footsteps.  They seemed to hesitate and then advanced; he heard a subdued voice, a man’s voice—­and in answer to it a woman’s.  Instinctively he drew a step back and stood unseen in the gloom.  There was no longer a sound of voices.  In silence they walked past his window, clearly revealed to him in the moonlight.  One of the two was Mary Standish.  The man was Rossland, who had stared at her so boldly in the smoking-room.