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given her courage to keep the truth from Peter!
She knocked at the heavy door of the igloo cabin. Blake was still up,
and when he opened it, he stared at her in wide-eyed amazement. Wapi
hung outside when Dolores entered, and the door closed. "I know you
think it strange for me to come at this hour," she apologized, "but in
this terrible gloom I've lost all count of hours. They have no
significance for me any more. And I wanted to see you--alone."
She emphasized the word. And as she spoke, she loosened her coat and
threw back her hood, so that the glow of the lamp lit up the ruffled
mass of gold the hood had covered. She sat down without waiting for
an invitation, and Blake sat down opposite her with a narrow table
between them. Her face was flushed with cold and wind as she looked
at him. Her eyes were blue with the blue of a steady flame, and they

met his own squarely. She was not nervous. Nor was she afraid.
"Perhaps you can guess--why I have come?" she asked.
He was appraising her almost startling beauty with the lamp glow
flooding down on her. For a moment he hesitated; then he nodded,
looking at her steadily. "Yes, I think I know," he said quietly. "It's
Captain Rydal. In fact, I'm quite positive. It's an unusual situation, you
know. Have I guessed correctly?"
She nodded, drawing in her breath quickly and leaning a little toward
him, wondering how much he knew and how he had come by it.
"A very unusual situation," he repeated. "There's nothing in the world
that makes beasts out of men--most men--more quickly than an arctic
night, Mrs. Keith. And they're all beasts out there--now--all except your
husband, and he is contented because he possesses the one white
woman aboard ship. It's putting it brutally plain, but it's the truth, isn't it?
For the time being they're beasts, every man of the twenty, and
you--pardon me!--are very beautiful. Rydal wants you, and the fact that
your husband is dying--"
"He is not dying," she interrupted him fiercely. "He shall not die! If he
did--"
"Do you love him?" There was no insult in Blake's quiet voice. He
asked the question as if much depended on the answer, as if he must
assure himself of that fact.
"Love him--my Peter? Yes!"
She leaned forward eagerly, gripping her hands in front of him on the
table. She spoke swiftly, as if she must convince him before he asked
her another question. Blake's eyes did not change. They had not
changed for an instant. They were hard, and cold, and searching,
unwarmed by her beauty, by the luster of her shining hair, by the touch
of her breath as it came to him over the table.

"I have gone everywhere with him--everywhere," she began. "Peter
writes books, you know, and we have gone into all sorts of places. We
love it--both of us--this adventuring. We have been all through the
country down there," she swept a hand to the south, "on dog sledges, in
canoes, with snowshoes, and pack-trains. Then we hit on the idea of
coming north on a whaler. You know, of course, Captain Rydal
planned to return this autumn. The crew was rough, but we expected
that. We expected to put up with a lot. But even before the ice shut us
in, before this terrible night came, Rydal insulted me. I didn't dare tell
Peter. I thought I could handle Rydal, that I could keep him in his place,
and I knew that if I told Peter, he would kill the beast. And then the
ice--and this night--" She choked.
Blake's eyes, gimleting to her soul, were shot with a sudden fire as he,
too, leaned a little over the table. But his voice was unemotional as
rock. It merely stated a fact. "That's why Captain Rydal allowed
himself to be frozen in," he said. "He had plenty of time to get into the
open channels, Mrs. Keith. But he wanted you. And to get you he knew
he would have to lay over. And if he laid over, he knew that he would
get you, for many things may happen in an arctic night. It shows the
depth of the man's feelings, doesn't it? He is sacrificing a great deal to
possess you, losing a great deal of time, and money, and all that. And
when your husband dies--"
Her clenched little fist struck the table. "He won't die, I tell you! Why
do you say that?"
"Because--Rydal says he is going to die."
"Rydal--lies. Peter had a fall, and it hurt his spine so that his legs are
paralyzed. But I know what it is. If he could