“It was no trouble.  And I hope you don’t mind.  It has been great fun.”

He tried to look casually out upon his people as he answered her.  It seemed to him there was only one thing to say, and that it was a duty to speak what was in his mind calmly and without emotion.

“Yes, I do mind,” he said.  “I mind so much that I wouldn’t trade what has happened for all the gold in these mountains.  I’m sorry because of what happened back in the cottonwoods, but I wouldn’t trade that, either.  I’m glad you’re alive.  I’m glad you’re here.  But something is missing.  You know what it is.  You must tell me about yourself.  It is the only fair thing for you to do now.”

She touched his arm with her hand.  “Let us wait for tomorrow.  Please—­let us wait.”

“And then—­tomorrow—­”

“It is your right to question me and send me back if I am not welcome.  But not tonight.  All this is too fine—­just you—­and your people—­and their happiness.”  He bent his head to catch her words, almost drowned by the hissing of a sky-rocket and the popping of firecrackers.  She nodded toward the buildings beyond his cabin.  “I am with Keok and Nawadlook.  They have given me a home.”  And then swiftly she added, “I don’t think you love your people more than I do, Alan Holt!”

Nawadlook was approaching, and with a lingering touch of her fingers on his arm she drew away from him.  His face did not show his disappointment, nor did he make a movement to keep her with him.

“Your people are expecting things of you,” she said.  “A little later, if you ask me, I may dance with you to the music of the tom-toms.”

He watched her as she went away with Nawadlook.  She looked back at him and smiled, and there was something in her face which set his heart beating faster.  She had been afraid aboard the ship, but she was not afraid of tomorrow.  Thought of it and the questions he would ask did not frighten her, and a happiness which he had persistently held away from himself triumphed in a sudden, submerging flood.  It was as if something in her eyes and voice had promised him that the dreams he had dreamed through weeks of torture and living death were coming true, and that possibly in her ride over the tundra that night she had come a little nearer to the truth of what those weeks had meant to him.  Surely he would never quite be able to tell her.  And what she said to him tomorrow would, in the end, make little difference.  She was alive, and he could not let her go away from him again.

He joined the tom-tom beaters and the dancers.  It rather amazed him to discover himself doing things which he had never done before.  His nature was an aloof one, observing and sympathetic, but always more or less detached.  At his people’s dances it was his habit to stand on the side-line, smiling and nodding encouragement, but never taking a part.  His habit of reserve fell from him now, and he seemed possessed of a new sense of freedom