For an hour Chloe paced up and down the little room. At first she could scarcely bring herself to realize that the two men, MacNair and Lapierre, had changed places. She remembered that in that very room she had more than once pictured that very thing. As the conviction grew upon her, her pulse quickened. Never before had she been so supremely—so wildly happy. There was a strange barbaric singing in her heart, as for the first time she saw MacNair—the real MacNair at his true worth. MacNair, the big man, the really great man, strong and brave, alone in the North fighting, night and day, against the snarling wolves of the world-waste. Fighting for the good of his Indians and the right of things as they should be.
Her mind dwelt upon the fine courage and the patience of him. She recalled the hurt look in his eyes when she ordered his arrest. She remembered his words to the officer—words of kindly apology for her own blind folly. She penetrated the rough exterior, and read the real gentleness of his soul. And then, with a shame and mortification that almost overwhelmed her, she saw herself as she must appear to him. She recollected how she had accused him, had sneered at him, had called him a liar and a thief, a murderer, and worse.
Tears streamed unheeded from her eyes as she recalled the unconscious pathos of his words as he stood beside his mother's grave. And the look of reproach with which he sank, to the ground when Lapierre's bullet laid him low. Her heart thrilled at the memory of the blazing wrath of him, the cold gleam of his eyes, the wicked snap of his iron jaw, as he said, "I have taken the man-trail!" She remembered the words he had once spoken: "When you have learned the North, we shall be friends." She wondered now if possibly this thing could ever be? Had she learned the North? Could she ever atone in his eyes for her cocksureness, her blind egotism?
Chloe quickened her pace, as if to walk away and leave these things behind. How she hated herself! It seemed to her, in her shame and mortification, that she could never look into this man's eyes again. Her glance strayed to the portrait of Tiger Elliston that stared down at her from its bullet-shattered frame upon the wall. The eyes of the portrait seemed to bore deep into her own, and the words of MacNair flashed through her brain—the words he had used as he gazed into the eyes of that selfsame portrait.
Unconsciously—fiercely she repeated those words aloud: "By God! Yon is the face of a man!" She started at the sound of her own voice. And then, like liquid flame, it seemed to the girl the blood of Tiger Elliston seethed and boiled in her veins—spurring her on to do!
"Do what?" she questioned. "What was there left to do, for one who had blundered so miserably?"
Like a flash came the answer. She had done MacNair a great wrong. She must right that wrong, or at least admit it. She must own her error and offer an apology.
Seating herself at the table, she seized a pen and wrote rapidly for a long, long time. And then for a long time more she sat buried in thought, and at the end of an hour she arose and tore up the pages she had written, and sat down again and penned another letter which she placed in an envelope addressed with the name of MacNair. This done she took the letter, tiptoed across the living-room, and pushing open the Louchoux girl's door entered and seated herself upon the edge of the bed. The Indian girl was wide awake. A brown hand stole from beneath the covers and clasped reassuringly about Chloe's fingers.
She handed the girl the letter.
"I can trust you," she said, "to place this in MacNair's hands. Go to sleep now, I will talk further with you tomorrow." And with a hurried good-night, Chloe returned to her own room.