Gods Country--And the Woman | Page 8

"Back there I couldn't quite believe you. I am beginning to now. You
are honest. But let us not talk of ourselves until after dinner. Do you
like the cake?"
She had given him a piece as large as his fist, and he bit off the end of
it.

"Delicious!" he cried instantly. "Think of it--nothing but bannock,
bannock, bannock for two years, and only six ounces of that a day for
the last six months! Do you care if I eat the whole of it--the cake, I
mean?"
Seriously she began cutting the remainder of the cake into quarters.
"It would be one of the biggest compliments you could pay me," she
said. "But won't you have some boiled tongue with it, a little canned
lobster, a pickle--"
"Pickles!" he interrupted. "Just cake and pickles--please! I've dreamed
of pickles up there. I've had 'em come to me at night as big as
mountains, and one night I dreamed of chasing a pickle with legs for
hours, and when at last I caught up with the thing it had turned into an
iceberg. Please let me have just pickles and cake!"
Behind the lightness of his words she saw the truth--the craving of
famine. Ashamed, he tried to hide it from her. He refused the third huge
piece of cake, but she reached over and placed it in his hand. She
insisted that he eat the last piece, and the last pickle in the bottle she
had opened.
When he finished, she said:
"Now--I know."
"What?"
"That you have spoken the truth, that you have come from a long time
in the North, and that I need not fear--what I did fear."
"And that fear? Tell me--"
She answered calmly, and in her eyes and the lines of her face came a
look of despair which she had almost hidden from him until now.
"I was thinking during those thirty minutes you away," she said. "And I
realized what folly it was in me to tell you as much as I have. Back

there, for just one insane moment, I thought that you might help me in a
situation which is as terrible as any you may have faced in your months
of Arctic night. But it is impossible. All that I can ask of you now--all
that I can demand of you to prove that you are the man you said you
were--is that you leave me, and never whisper a word into another ear
of our meeting. Will you promise that?"
"To promise that--would be lying," he said slowly, and his hand
unclenched and lay listlessly on his knee. "If there is a reason-- some
good reason why I should leave you--then I will go."
"Then--you demand a reason?"
"To demand a reason would be--"
He hesitated, and she added:
"Unchivalrous."
"Yes--more than that," he replied softly. He bowed his head, and for a
moment she saw the tinge of gray in his blond hair, the droop of his
clean, strong shoulders, the SOMETHING of hopelessness in his
gesture. A new light flashed into her own face. She raised a hand, as if
to reach out to him, and dropped it as he looked up.
"Will you let me help you?" he asked.
She was not looking at him, but beyond him. In her face he saw again
the strange light of hope that had illumined it at the pool.
"If I could believe," she whispered, still looking beyond him. "If I
could trust you, as I have read that the maidens of old trusted their
knights. But--it seems impossible. In those days, centuries and
centuries ago, I guess, womanhood was next to--God. Men fought for it,
and died for it, to keep it pure and holy. If you had come to me then
you would have levelled your lance and fought for me without asking a
question, without demanding a reward, without reasoning whether I
was right or wrong--and all because I was a woman. Now it is different.

You are a part of civilization, and if you should do all that I might ask
of you it would be because you have a price in view. I know. I have
looked into you. I understand. That price would be--ME!"
She looked at him now, her breast throbbing, almost a sob in her
quivering voice, defying him to deny the truth of her words.
"You have struck home," he said, and his voice sounded strange to
himself. "And I am not sorry. I am glad that you have seen--and
understand. It seems almost indecent for me to tell you this, when I
have known you for such a short time. But I have known you for
years--in my hopes and dreams. For you I would go to the end of