“Yes, I—think you are,” he laughed joyously, and suddenly he bent his head and pressed her hand to his lips, and in that way, with her hand in his, they set out over the trail which they had not traveled together since the day he had come from Nome.
There was a warm glow in her face, and something beautifully soft and sweet in her eyes which she did not try to keep away from him. It made him forget the cottonwoods and the plains beyond, and his caution, and Sokwenna’s advice to guard carefully against the hiding-places of Ghost Kloof and the country beyond.
“I have been thinking a great deal today,” she was saying, “because you have left me so much alone. I have been thinking of you. And—my thoughts have given me a wonderful happiness.”
“And I have been—in paradise,” he replied.
“You do not think that I am wicked?”
“I could sooner believe the sun would never come up again.”
“Nor that I have been unwomanly?”
“You are my dream of all that is glorious in womanhood.”
“Yet I have followed you—have thrust myself at you, fairly at your head, Alan.”
“For which I thank God,” He breathed devoutly.