"That you have spoken the truth, that you have come from a long time in the North, and that I need not fear—what I did fear."
"And that fear? Tell me—"
She answered calmly, and in her eyes and the lines of her face came a look of despair which she had almost hidden from him until now.
"I was thinking during those thirty minutes you away," she said. "And I realized what folly it was in me to tell you as much as I have. Back there, for just one insane moment, I thought that you might help me in a situation which is as terrible as any you may have faced in your months of Arctic night. But it is impossible. All that I can ask of you now—all that I can demand of you to prove that you are the man you said you were—is that you leave me, and never whisper a word into another ear of our meeting. Will you promise that?"
"To promise that—would be lying," he said slowly, and his hand unclenched and lay listlessly on his knee. "If there is a reason—some good reason why I should leave you—then I will go."
"Then—you demand a reason?"
"To demand a reason would be—"
He hesitated, and she added:
"Unchivalrous."
"Yes—more than that," he replied softly. He bowed his head, and for a moment she saw the tinge of gray in his blond hair, the droop of his clean, strong shoulders, the SOMETHING of hopelessness in his gesture. A new light flashed into her own face. She raised a hand, as if to reach out to him, and dropped it as he looked up.