“Men like you— ought to have a woman to care for,” she said. “He was like that.”
“You mean—” His eyes sought the long, dark box.
“Yes— he was like that.”
“I know how you feel,” he said; and for a moment he did not look at her. “I’ve gone through— a lot of it. Father an’ mother and a sister. Mother was the last, and I wasn’t much more than a kid— eighteen, I guess— but it don’t seem much more than yesterday. When you come up here and you don’t see the sun for months nor a white face for a year or more it brings up all those things pretty much as though they happened only a little while ago.’”
“All of them are— dead?” she asked.
“All but one. She wrote to me for a long time, and I thought she’d keep her word. Pelly— that’s Pelliter— thinks we’ve just had a misunderstanding, and that she’ll write again. I haven’t told him that she turned me down to marry another fellow. I didn’t want to make him think any unpleasant things about his own girl. You’re apt to do that when you’re almost dying of loneliness.”
The woman’s eyes were shining. She leaned a little toward him.
“You should be glad,” she said. “If she turned you down she wouldn’t have been worthy of you— afterward. She wasn’t a true woman. If she had been, her love wouldn’t have grown cold because you were away. It mustn’t spoil your faith— because that is— beautiful.”
He had put a hand into his pocket again, and drew out now a thin package wrapped in buckskin. His face was like a boy’s.
“I might have— if I hadn’t met you,” he said. “I’d like to let you know— some way— what you’ve done for me. You and this.”