"Keeko!"
He moved away. He passed on to the open gateway of the stockade and gazed far out towards the south-west. The sunlight upon the melting snow was well-nigh blinding. But it troubled him not at all. His eyes were no longer seeing. They were absorbed in a deep contemplation, visualizing scenes that rose up at him out of the dim, distant past. He was thinking of that moment of parting, when he had gazed down into the great blue eyes of his baby girl as she was held up to him by her erring mother.
"Keeko!" he muttered again. "Coqueline!" Then, after a long, almost interminable pause: "Nita!"
CHAPTER XXI
THE GREAT REWARD
Years ago Steve had drunk to the dregs a despair that left life shorn of everything but a desolate existence. The effect of that time had remained in him. It would remain so long as he lived. But it was a reverse of the picture which despairing human nature usually presents. It had deepened the reserve of a nature at all times undemonstrative. It had hardened a will that was already of an iron quality. It had deepened and broadened a fine understanding of human nature, and finally it had succeeded in mellowing a tolerance that had always been his. For him those bitter moments had proved to be the cleansing fires which had produced nothing but pure gold.
Now the memory of those dread moments was stirring afresh. But despair had no place in the emotions it provoked. It was all the other extreme. A world of glad hope had taken possession of him. A gladness unspeakable, almost overpowering. A great impulse drove him now. It was a sort of wild desire to yield to the amazing madness of it all, and cry from the house-tops of his little world all that was clamouring for unrestrained expression.
But the man had no more power to yield to this wild surge of feeling than he had had power to yield to the despair of former years. So, for a while, his voice remained silent, and only his lighting eyes gave index of the thought and feeling behind them.
With the departure of Marcel and Keeko for the mother welcome of An-ina, Steve also returned to the store. He came to release the willing creature, yearning for that moment when she could revel in the joy of the contemplation of her boy's happiness.