"He's forever dreaming of the gold that lies beyond the skyline—this man of mine—and always going to find it," she said fondly. "So please, Mr. Kilbuck, don't get him interested in any mythical island. We've been gone from the States six months now, and I want him to go back for the winter." There was a half-playful, half-earnest note of pleading in her voice, but the White Chief noticed that her eyes did not fully meet his.
During all her thirty years, doubtless, Ellen Boreland had looked a friendly world in the eye. She was that sort. He saw that she was troubled now at not being able to do this in the case of the trader of Katleean. Probably he himself was not attractive to her—perhaps he was even fascinatingly repellant with that electric and disturbing and promising quality that drew almost irresistibly. There were women who, under that impulsion, had been moved to come close and gaze into his pale, black-lashed eyes. It was an impulse akin to that which urges people to fling themselves from great heights; to peer into abandoned, stagnant wells. . . . He had an idea that she knew he saw this, for he had watched her face flush under his glance as though at the thought of having dishonored herself by sharing with him some guilty secret. He saw that she was uncomfortable in accepting his hospitality. Twice during their stay she had entreated her husband to leave Katleean, or at least go back aboard the schooner for the remainder of their visit. But Shane Boreland, clean-hearted adventurer, to whom the vagaries of a woman's mind were a closed book, had only laughed at her request, retorting that life aboard the Hoonah had made her into a little sea-dog and a few weeks ashore with such a host as the White Chief would do her a world of good.
The host now lighted one of his short-lived cigarettes. In his mind was forming a plan suggested by Ellen Foreland's words. He might develop it later, and again he might not, but it would not be amiss to prepare the way.
He tossed his cigarette into the fireplace, slipping without effort into the part he had assigned himself.
"Dreams are the things that make life worth living, Mrs. Boreland." His low, vibrant tones sounded pleasantly in the dusky room. "Boreland here has his dreams of a mine of gold, but I—" he hesitated, his voice taking on a whimsical softness, "but I, in my Northern solitude, have my dreams of a heart of gold." His look was designed to leave no doubt in Ellen Boreland's mind that it was a feminine heart of gold that he sought.
There was a pause during which the charred logs in the fireplace dropped down sending up a brighter flame.
"But you mustn't be too sure that the Lost Island is a myth." He spoke briskly now as it putting aside deliberately his own longings. "In this part of the country some say that the Lost Island is that of Kon Klayu."
As Boreland looked up questioningly the White Chief went on:
"Of course, it does in some ways answer the description. It is ninety miles off the coast here. Cape Katleean is the nearest land. The Japan current gives it a milder climate and we know that the beach sand carries gold—a little gold."
"Anyone living there?" interrupted Boreland eagerly.