She did not turn. “Mary!”
He could see again that little, heart-like throb in her throat when she faced him.
And then he learned the secret, softly whispered, with sweet, warm lips pressed to his.
“It wasn’t a doctor I sent for, Alan. It was a minister. We need one to marry Stampede and Nawadlook and Tautuk and Keok. Of course, you and I can wait—”
But she never finished, for her lips were smothered with a love that brought a little sob of joy from her heart.
And then she whispered things to him which he had never guessed of Mary Standish, and never quite hoped to hear. She was a little wild, a little reckless it may be, but what she said filled him with a happiness which he believed had never come to any other man in the world. It was not her desire to return to the States at all. She never wanted to return. She wanted nothing down there, nothing that the Standish fortune-builders had left her, unless he could find some way of using it for the good of Alaska. And even then she was afraid it might lead to the breaking of her dream. For there was only one thing that would make her happy, and that was his world. She wanted it just as it was—the big tundras, his people, the herds, the mountains—with the glory and greatness of God all about them in the open spaces. She now understood what he had meant when he said he was an Alaskan and not an American; she was that, too, an Alaskan first of all, and for Alaska she would go on fighting with him, hand in hand, until the very end. His heart throbbed until it seemed it would break, and all the time she was whispering her hopes and secrets to him he stroked her silken hair, until it lay spread over his breast, and against his lips, and for the first time in years a hot flood of tears filled his eyes.
So happiness came to them; and only strange voices outside raised Mary’s head from where it lay, and took her quickly to the window where she stood a vision of sweet loveliness, radiant in the tumbled confusion and glory of her hair. Then she turned with a little cry, and her eyes were shining like stars as she looked at Alan.
“It is Amuk Toolik,” she said. “He has returned.”
“And—is he alone?” Alan asked, and his heart stood still while he waited for her answer.
Demurely she came to his side, and smoothed his pillow, and stroked back his hair. “I must go and do up my hair, Alan,” she said then. “It would never do for them to find me like this.”