Snowdrift had listened with breathless attention and when Brent concluded she was silent for a long time. "This girl named Kitty?" she asked at length, "Who is she, and why was she your friend? Did you love this woman? Is she beautiful?"
"No," answered Brent, gravely, "I did not love her. She was not the kind of a woman a man would love. She was beautiful after a fashion. She might have been very beautiful had her life fallen in a different groove. She was an adventuress, big hearted, keen of brain—but an adventuress. Hers was a life distorted and twisted far from its original intent. For it was plain to all that she had been cast in a finer mould, and even the roughest and most brutal of the men treated her with a certain respect that was not accorded to the others. She never spoke of her past. She accepted the present philosophically, never by word or look admitting that she had chosen the wrong road. Her ethics were the ethics of the muck and ruck of the women of the dance halls. She differed only in that she had imagination—and a certain pride that prevented her from holding herself cheaply. Where others were careless and slovenly, she was well groomed.
And while they caroused and shamelessly debauched themselves, she held aloof from the rabble.
"You asked why she was my friend. I suppose it was because she was quick to see that I too, was different from the riff-raff of the dives. Not that I was one whit better than they—for I was not. It was no credit to me that I was inherently different. It was, I reckon, a certain innate pride that kept me out of the filth of the mire, as it kept her out. To me the painted slovens were physically loathsome, so I shunned them. She was keener of brain than I—or maybe it was because she had a perspective. But while I was still at the height of my success with the claims and with the cards, she foresaw the end, and she warned me. But, I disregarded the warning, and later, when I was rushing straight to the final crash, she warned me again and again, and she despised me for the fool I was.
"When, at the very bottom, I was taken suddenly sick, it was Kitty who nursed me through. And then, when I was on my feet again she left me to myself. I have not seen her since."
"And, if you make a strike again," asked the girl in a low voice, "Will you go back to Dawson—to the cards and the hooch?"
"I will go back to Dawson," he answered, "And pay my debts. I will not go back to the cards. I am through with gambling for good and all, for I have promised. And when a Brent gives his word, he would die rather than break it."
"But the hooch?" persisted Snowdrift. "Are you done with the hooch too?"
Brent was conscious that the eyes of the girl were fixed upon his in a gaze of curious intentness, as though their deliberate calm suppressed some mighty emotion. He groped for words: "I don't—that is, how can I tell? I drink no hooch now—but there is none to drink. I hate it for I know that what it did to me once it will do to me again. I hate it—and I love it!" exclaimed the man. "Tell me, is hate stronger than love?"
The girl was silent for a moment, and by the clenching of her fists, Brent knew that a struggle was raging within her. She ignored his question, and when she spoke her voice was low, and the words fell with a peculiar dullness of tone: "I, too, have a thing to tell. It is a horrible thing. And when you have heard you will not want to marry me." The girl paused, and Brent felt suddenly sick and weak. There was a dull ache in his breast that was an actual physical pain, and when the cold breeze fanned his forehead, it struck with a deadly chill. With a mighty effort he recovered, leaned swiftly toward her and was vaguely conscious that she winced at the grip of his fingers upon her arm.