"It looks bad," Jacob Welse said, on parting for the night. "But rest assured, St. Vincent, bad or not, you'll not be stretched up so long as I've a hand to play in the rumpus. I am certain you did not kill Borg, and there's my fist on it."
"A long day," Corliss remarked, as he walked back with Frona to her cabin.
"And a longer to-morrow," she answered, wearily. "And I'm so sleepy."
"You're a brave little woman, and I'm proud of you." It was ten o'clock, and he looked out through the dim twilight to the ghostly ice drifting steadily by. "And in this trouble," he went on, "depend upon me in any way."
"In any way?" she queried, with a catch in her voice.
"If I were a hero of the melodrama I'd say; 'To the death!' but as I'm not; I'll just repeat, in any way."
"You are good to me, Vance. I can never repay—"
"Tut! tut! I do not put myself on sale. Love is service, I believe."
She looked at him for a long time, but while her face betrayed soft wonder, at heart she was troubled, she knew not why, and the events of the day, and of all the days since she had known him, came fluttering through her mind.
"Do you believe in a white friendship?" she asked at last. "For I do hope that such a bond may hold us always. A bright, white friendship, a comradeship, as it were?" And as she asked, she was aware that the phrase did not quite express what she felt and would desire. And when he shook his head, she experienced a glad little inexplicable thrill.