Gods Country--And the Woman | Page 8

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 the world. And I can do what other men have done, centuries ago. They called them knights. You may call me a MAN!"
At his words she rose from where she had been sitting. She faced the radiant walls of the forests that rolled billow upon billow in the distance, and the sun lighted up her crown of hair in a glory. One hand still clung to her breast. She was breathing even more quickly, and the flush had deepened in her cheek until it was like the tender stain of the crushed bakneesh. Philip rose and stood beside her. His shoulders were back. He looked where she looked, and as he gazed upon the red