She was in little haste to begin.  If dalliance were to his liking, it was to hers.  To him it was very comfortable, soothing his lungs with nicotine and gazing upon her.  It was snug and warm here, while down by the water-hole began a trail which he would soon be hitting through the chilly hours.  He felt he ought to be angry with Freda for the scene she had created, but somehow he didn’t feel a bit wrathful.  Like as not there wouldn’t have been any scene if it hadn’t been for that McFee woman.  If he were the Governor, he would put a poll tax of a hundred ounces a quarter upon her and her kind and all gospel sharks and sky pilots.  And certainly Freda had behaved very ladylike, held her own with Mrs. Eppingwell besides.  Never gave the girl credit for the grit.  He looked lingeringly over her, coming back now and again to the eyes, behind the deep earnestness of which he could not guess lay concealed a deeper sneer.  And, Jove, wasn’t she well put up!  Wonder why she looked at him so?  Did she want to marry him, too?  Like as not; but she wasn’t the only one.  Her looks were in her favor, weren’t they?  And young—­younger than Loraine Lisznayi.  She couldn’t be more than twenty-three or four, twenty-five at most.  And she’d never get stout.  Anybody could guess that the first time.  He couldn’t say it of Loraine, though. She certainly had put on flesh since the day she served as model.  Huh! once he got her on trail he’d take it off.  Put her on the snowshoes to break ahead of the dogs.  Never knew it to fail, yet.  But his thought leaped ahead to the palace under the lazy Mediterranean sky—­and how would it be with Loraine then?  No frost, no trail, no famine now and again to cheer the monotony, and she getting older and piling it on with every sunrise.  While this girl Freda—­he sighed his unconscious regret that he had missed being born under the flag of the Turk, and came back to Alaska.

“Well?” Both hands of the clock pointed perpendicularly to midnight, and it was high time he was getting down to the water-hole.

“Oh!” Freda started, and she did it prettily, delighting him as his fellows have ever been delighted by their womankind.  When a man is made to believe that a woman, looking upon him thoughtfully, has lost herself in meditation over him, that man needs be an extremely cold-blooded individual in order to trim his sheets, set a lookout, and steer clear.

“I was just wondering what you wanted to see me about,” he explained, drawing his chair up to hers by the table.

“Floyd,” she looked him steadily in the eyes, “I am tired of the whole business.  I want to go away.  I can’t live it out here till the river breaks.  If I try, I’ll die.  I am sure of it.  I want to quit it all and go away, and I want to do it at once.”

She laid her hand in mute appeal upon the back of his, which turned over and became a prison.  Another one, he thought, just throwing herself at him.  Guess it wouldn’t hurt Loraine to cool her feet by the water-hole a little longer.