“If you only knew—­then you would go back, and never see me again.  You would understand—­”

“I will never understand,” He interrupted again.  “I say that it is you who do not understand, Meleese!  I don’t care what Jean would tell me.  Nothing that has ever happened can make me not want you.  Don’t you understand?  Nothing, I say—­nothing that has happened—­that can ever happen—­unless—­”

For a moment he stopped, looking straight into her eyes.

“Nothing—­nothing in the world, Meleese,” he repeated almost in a whisper, “unless you did not tell me the truth back on the trail at Wekusko when you said that it was not a sin to love you.”

“And if I tell you—­if I confess that it is a sin, that I lied back there—­then will you go?” she demanded quickly.

Her eyes flamed on him with a strange light.

“No,” he said calmly.  “I would not believe you.”

“But it is the truth.  I lied—­lied terribly to you.  I have sinned even more terribly, and—­and you must go.  Don’t you understand me now?  If some one should come—­and find you here—­”

“There would be a fight,” he said grimly.  “I have come prepared to fight.”  He waited a moment, and in the silence the brown head in front of him dropped slowly and he saw a tremor pass through the slender form, as if it had been torn by an instant’s pain.  The pallor had gone from Howland’s face.  The mute surrender in the bowed head, the soft sobbing notes that he heard now in the girl’s breath, the confession that he read in her voiceless grief set his heart leaping, and again he drew her close into his arms and turned her face up to his own.  There was no resistance now, no words, no pleading for him to go; but in her eyes he saw the prayerful entreaty with which she had come to him on the Wekusko trail, and in the quivering red mouth the same torture and love and half-surrender that had burned themselves into his soul there.  Love, triumph, undying faith shone in his eyes, and he crushed her face closer until the lovely mouth lay pouted like a crimson rose for him to kiss.

“You—­you told me something that wasn’t true—­once—­back there,” he whispered, “and you promised that you wouldn’t do it again.  You haven’t sinned—­in the way that I mean, and in the way that you want me to believe.”  His arms tightened still more about her, and his voice was suddenly filled with a tense quick eagerness.  “Why don’t you tell me everything?” he asked.  “You believe that if I knew certain things I would never want to see you again, that I would go back into the South.  You have told me that.  Then—­if you want me to go—­why don’t you reveal these things to me?  If you can’t do that, go with me to-night.  We will go anywhere—­to the ends of the earth—­”