“Thank you,” said the sick man.
“Yes, Ky,” Hildegarde spoke with a little break in her voice. “The exploring’s all done.” As if the dog had heard and comprehended, and so been delivered from evil dreams, she got up, came shakily down from the bed, and stood for a moment at the door, looking out.
“What’s ahead of us, Ky?” he asked, dreamily. “An ice sky or a water sky?”
“How was it you could tell?”
“Oh, you learn. The field-ice reflection is the brightest, a little yellow; drift ice, purer white; new ice, gray. And where there’s open water the ‘blink’ is slatey, isn’t it, Ky? Or blue, like the skies of California.”
“But the Pole?” The word brought a startled look into his face, and his eyes guarded the threshold so fiercely she sunk her voice to meet his humor. “What was it like?” she whispered.
“Ky knows,” he answered, warily. “Ky got there.”
With a supreme humility, or was it a high indifference on her part, the great explorer crossed the threshold and sat outside in the sun.
“I’ve wondered about it a good deal, as I’ve lain here,” said the sick man. “It almost seems as if nothing in the world-scheme were so precious as suffering. Men feel that when they recall their early hardships. Dimly they see that nothing they’ve found later was of such value to them. Yes, yes, beside, the days of the struggle the days of the harvest are dull. And it’s this”—he crouched over the oilskin, and dropped his voice—“this incentive to the greatest struggle that men can embark upon—this is the Great Legacy I shall leave behind!”
“But what,” she pointed to the thing he was hugging between gaunt arms, “what is in that?”