White and dripping with snow, his face bloodless in the tense excitement of the moment, he stood with his arms half reaching out when the curtain was thrust aside and the girl stood before him. At first she did not recognize him in his ghostly storm-covered disguise. But before the startled cry that was on her lips found utterance the fear that had blanched her face gave place to a swift sweeping flood of color. For a space there was no word between them as they stood separated by the breadth of the room, Howland with his arms held out to her in pleading silence, Meleese with her hands clutched to her bosom, her throat atremble with strange sobbing notes that made no more sound than the fluttering of a bird's wing.
And Howland, as he came across the room to her, found no words to say--none of the things that he had meant to whisper to her, but drew her to him and crushed her close to his breast, knowing that in this moment nothing could tell her more eloquently than the throbbing of his own heart, the passionate pressure of his face to her face, of his great love which seemed to stir into life the very silence that encompassed them.
It was a silence broken after a moment by a short choking cry, the quick-breathing terror of a face turned suddenly up to him robbed of its flush and quivering with a fear that still found no voice in words. He felt the girl's arms straining against him for freedom; her eyes were filled with a staring, questioning horror, as though his presence had grown into a thing of which she was afraid. The change was tonic to him. This was what he had expected---the first terror at his presence, the struggle against his will, and there surged back over him the forces he had reserved for this moment. He opened his arms and Meleese slipped from them, her hands clutched again in the clinging drapery of her bosom.
"I have come for you, Meleese," he said as calmly as though his arrival had been expected. "Jean is my prisoner. I forced him to drive me to the old cabin up on the mountain, and he is waiting there with the dogs. We will start back to-night--now." Suddenly he sprang to her again, his voice breaking in a low pleading cry. "My God, don't you see now how I love you?" he went on, taking her white face between his two hands. "Don't you understand, Meleese? Jean and I have fought--he is bound hand and foot up there in the cabin--and I am waiting for you--for you--" He pressed her face against him, her lips so close that he could feel their quavering breath. "I have come to fight for you--if you won't go," he whispered tensely. "I don't know why your people have tried to kill me, I don't know why they want to kill me, and it makes no difference to me now. I want you. I've wanted you since that first glimpse of your face through the window, since the fight on the trail--every minute, every hour, and I won't give you up as long as I'm alive. If you won't go with me--if you won't go now--to-night--" He held her closer, his voice trembling in her hair. "If you won't go--I'm going to stay with you!"
There was a thrillingly decisive note in his last words, a note that carried with it more than all he had said before, and as Meleese partly drew away from him again she gave a sharp cry of protest.
"No--no--no--" she panted, her hands clutching at his arm. "You must go back now--now--" She pushed him toward the door, and as he backed a step, looking down into her face, he saw the choking tremble of her white throat, heard again the fluttering terror in her breath. "They will kill you if they find you here," she urged. "They think you are dead--that you fell through the ice and were drowned. If you don't believe me, if you don't believe that I can never go with you, tell Jean--"
Her words seemed to choke her as she struggled to finish.
"Tell Jean what?" he questioned softly.
"Will you go--then?" she cried with sobbing eagerness, as if he already understood her. "Will you go back if Jean tells you everything--everything about me--about--"
"No," he interrupted.