He nodded, because the thickness in his throat made it the easier form of speech.
“I wrote you there,” she said. “I wrote the letter before I jumped into the sea. It went to Nome with Captain Rifle’s ship.”
“I didn’t get it.”
“You didn’t get it?” There was wonderment in her voice, and then, if he had observed it, understanding.
“Then you didn’t mean that just now? You didn’t intend to do it? It was because you had blamed yourself for my death, and it was a great relief to find me alive. That was it, wasn’t it?”
Stupidly he nodded again. “Yes, it was a great relief.”
“You see, I had faith in you even when you wouldn’t help me,” she went on. “So much faith that I trusted you with my secret in the letter I wrote. To all the world but you I am dead—to Rossland, Captain Rifle, everyone. In my letter I told you I had arranged with the young Thlinkit Indian. He smuggled the canoe over the side just before I leaped in, and picked me up. I am a good swimmer. Then he paddled me ashore while the boats were making their search.”
In a moment she had placed a gulf between them again, on the other side of which she stood unattainable. It was inconceivable that only a few moments ago he had crushed her in his arms. The knowledge that he had done this thing, and that she was looking at him now as if it had never happened, filled him with a smothering sense of humiliation. She made it impossible for him to speak about it, even to apologize more fully.
“Now I am here,” she was saying in a quiet, possessive sort of way. “I didn’t think of coming when I jumped into the sea. I made up my mind afterward. I think it was because I met a little man with red whiskers whom you once pointed out to me in the smoking salon on the Nome. And so—I am your guest, Mr. Holt.”
There was not the slightest suspicion of apology in her voice as she smoothed back her hair where he had crumpled it. It was as if she belonged here, and had always belonged here, and was giving him permission to enter her domain. Shock was beginning to pass away from him, and he could feel his feet upon the earth once more. His spirit-visions of her as she had walked hand in hand with him during the past weeks, her soft eyes filled with love, faded away before the reality of Mary Standish in flesh and blood, her quiet mastery of things, her almost omniscient unapproachableness. He reached out his hands, but there was a different light in his eyes, and she placed her own in them confidently.