She knocked at the heavy door of the igloo cabin.  Blake was still up, and when he opened it, he stared at her in wide-eyed amazement.  Wapi hung outside when Dolores entered, and the door closed.  “I know you think it strange for me to come at this hour,” she apologized, “but in this terrible gloom I’ve lost all count of hours.  They have no significance for me any more.  And I wanted to see you—­alone.”

She emphasized the word.  And as she spoke, she loosened her coat and threw back her hood, so that the glow of the lamp lit up the ruffled mass of gold the hood had covered.  She sat down without waiting for an invitation, and Blake sat down opposite her with a narrow table between them.  Her face was flushed with cold and wind as she looked at him.  Her eyes were blue with the blue of a steady flame, and they met his own squarely.  She was not nervous.  Nor was she afraid.

“Perhaps you can guess—­why I have come?” she asked.

He was appraising her almost startling beauty with the lamp glow flooding down on her.  For a moment he hesitated; then he nodded, looking at her steadily.  “Yes, I think I know,” he said quietly.  “It’s Captain Rydal.  In fact, I’m quite positive.  It’s an unusual situation, you know.  Have I guessed correctly?”

She nodded, drawing in her breath quickly and leaning a little toward him, wondering how much he knew and how he had come by it.

“A very unusual situation,” he repeated.  “There’s nothing in the world that makes beasts out of men—­most men—­more quickly than an arctic night, Mrs. Keith.  And they’re all beasts out there—­now—­all except your husband, and he is contented because he possesses the one white woman aboard ship.  It’s putting it brutally plain, but it’s the truth, isn’t it?  For the time being they’re beasts, every man of the twenty, and you—­pardon me!—­are very beautiful.  Rydal wants you, and the fact that your husband is dying—­”

“He is not dying,” she interrupted him fiercely.  “He shall not die!  If he did—­”

“Do you love him?” There was no insult in Blake’s quiet voice.  He asked the question as if much depended on the answer, as if he must assure himself of that fact.

“Love him—­my Peter?  Yes!”

She leaned forward eagerly, gripping her hands in front of him on the table.  She spoke swiftly, as if she must convince him before he asked her another question.  Blake’s eyes did not change.  They had not changed for an instant.  They were hard, and cold, and searching, unwarmed by her beauty, by the luster of her shining hair, by the touch of her breath as it came to him over the table.