"Thanks, m'sieur," struggled Jan, striving to keep a lump out of his throat. "It's nothing like that. I don't need money. Half a million would just about buy—what I've given away up there."
He clutched his hand for an instant to the empty pocket where the papers had been.
CHAPTER XXVI
TEMPTATION
That night, leaving Thornton still at supper in the little old Windsor Hotel, Jan slipped away, and with Kazan at his heels, crossed the frozen Saskatchewan to the spruce forest on the north shore. He wanted to be alone, to think, to fight with himself against a desire which was almost overpowering him. Once, long ago, he had laid his soul bare to Jean de Gravois, and Jean had given him comfort. To-night he longed to go to Thornton, as he had gone to Jean, and to tell him the same story, and what had passed that day in the office of the sub-commissioner. In his heart there had grown something for Thornton that was stronger than friendship—something that would have made him fight for him, and die for him, as he would have fought and died for Jean de Gravois. It was a feeling cemented by a belief that something was troubling Thornton—that he, too, was filled with a loneliness and a grief which he was trying to conceal. And yet he fought to restrain himself from confiding in his new friend. It would do no good, he knew, except by relieving him of a part of his mental burden. He walked along the shore of the river and recrossed it again near the company's offices. All were dark with the exception of the sub-commissioner's room. In that there glowed a light. The sub-commissioner was keeping his promise. He was working. He worked until late, for Jan came back two hours after and saw the light still there.
A week—it might be ten days, the sub-commissioner had told him, and it would be over. Always something in the north drew Jan's eyes, and he looked there now, wondering what would happen to him after that week was over.
Lights were out and people were in bed when he and Kazan returned to the hotel. But Thornton was up, sitting by himself in the gloom, as Jan had first seen him at Le Pas. Jan sat down beside him. There was an uneasy tremor in Thornton's voice when he said:
"Jan, did you ever love a woman—love her until you were ready and willing to die for her?"
The suddenness of the question wrung the truth from Jan's lips in a low, choking voice. For an instant he thought that Thornton must have guessed his secret.
"Yes, m'sieur."