“It is.”
She was so near that his lips might have touched her shining hair.
“And when you return, I must go. That will be the only way.”
“I think so.”
“It will be hard. It may be, after all, that I am a coward. But to face all that—alone—”
“You won’t be alone,” he said quietly, still looking at the far-away hills. “If you go, I am going with you.”
It seemed as if she had stopped breathing for a moment at his side, and then, with a little, sobbing cry she drew away from him and stood at the half-opened door of Nawadlook’s room, and the glory in her eyes was the glory of his dreams as he had wandered with her hand in hand over the tundras in those days of grief and half-madness when he had thought she was dead.
“I am glad I was in Ellen McCormick’s cabin the day you came,” she was saying. “And I thank God for giving me the madness and courage to come to you. I am not afraid of anything in the world now—because—I love you, Alan!”
And as Nawadlook’s door closed behind her, Alan stumbled out into the sunlight, a great drumming in his heart, and a tumult in his brain that twisted the world about him until for a little it held neither vision nor space nor sound.