The two thus left entirely alone in the deep quiet of the gulch to pass the night together looked at each other for a moment with a shade of silent embarrassment. But the girl, accustomed as she was to take care of herself in all sorts of situations and surroundings, and endued with a certain fierce chastity of nature, recovered herself instantly and spoke quite naturally.
"I feel tired too, and would like to go to sleep now, if I may."
"Certainly," said Stephen. "You have this room to yourself. The stove will burn till daylight, and you have the whisky if you feel cold in the night. Good-night."
His tone was very formal, for he would so much have liked it to be otherwise, and without looking at her he took a match from his pocket and went into the other room, shutting the door after him. The girl waited a moment, then she shut the door of the stove and threw herself down on the soft pile of blankets, and drawing one of them over her to her ears, drew a deep, contented sigh, and was peacefully asleep in a few seconds.
The next morning Stephen rose stiff and cramped from his denuded bed. When he was completely dressed he silently opened his door and crept noiselessly into the adjoining room. The girl was not yet awake, and he stole softly over to the bed on the hearth and looked down at her. She lay warm and sleeping comfortably amongst the blankets. She was fully dressed, just as she had been the previous evening, except that two or three buttons were unfastened at the collar of her dress, and allowed the solid white neck to show beneath the rounded chin. The little head, with its mass of dark silky curls, lay inclined towards the stove, and the curled rosy lips had a softer smile than they generally wore in the daytime. Stephen leaned over her, entranced and breathless. As his eyes followed the dark arch of the eyebrows, the sweet delicate contour of the cheek, he forgot the horror he felt of her sometimes in her waking moments, forgot the hideous background of the saloons, forgot all the evil there might be in her, and bowed before that supreme power that human beauty has over us; he worshipped her as he had never worshipped his God. For a few seconds it was enough for him to gaze on her, then came an overwhelming impulse to stoop and kiss the soft youthful lips, to touch them even if ever so lightly. If he could without awakening her! But no, she was his guest, under his roof and protection. All that was best in his nature rose and held him motionless like a hand of iron. After a few seconds Katrine stirred, and Stephen, feeling she was about to awake, would have moved away, but his eyes seemed fixed and as impossible to remove from her face as one's hands are from an electric battery. The next minute her lids were lifted, and her eyes, two wells of living light, flashed up at him.
"Good-morning," she said, sitting up. "How dreadfully pale you look, Stephen! What is the matter?"
"Do I?" he answered, with a forced laugh, feeling the blood, which had seemed to rest suspended in his veins for those few seconds, rush to his heart again in great waves.
"You do indeed," she said, getting up. "I expect you want your breakfast. Tell me what I can do to make myself useful."
She shook her hair straight, fastened the collar of her bodice, and, was dressed. She needed no toilet apparently, but looked as clean and fresh as a rose waking up in its garden.
"Nothing," returned Stephen hastily. "Go over and tell Talbot to come in to breakfast, if you like; I'll have it ready when you come back."