if there was one among them all who had not at some time fallen into this same little error as Mrs. Becker.  For the first time he began to look at himself.  Mrs. Becker had laughed with Bucky Nome, her cheeks had grown a little flushed, her eyes had shone radiantly—­but were those things a sin?  Had those same eyes not looked up into his own, filled with a sweetness that thrilled him, when he bent over her beside the fire out on the Churchill trail?  Was there not that same lovely flush in her face when his lips had almost touched her hair?  And had not the colonel’s sudden return brought a flush into both their faces?  He smiled to himself, and for a moment he thrilled ecstatically.  The reaction came like a shock.  In an instant other scenes—­other faces—­flashed upon him, and again he saw the luring, beautiful face of Eileen Hawkins, who smiled on men as Mrs. Becker had smiled on Bucky Nome and on him.

He closed his eyes and tried to force himself into sleep, but failed.  At last he rose silently from his bunk, filled his pipe, and sat down in the darkness beside the stove.  The storm had increased to a gale, wailing and moaning over the cabin outside, and the sound carried him back to the last night in the cabin far to the south, when he had destroyed the hyacinth-scented letter.  The thought of the letter moved him restlessly.  He listened to Pierrot’s breathing, and knew that the half-breed was asleep.  Then he rose to his feet and laid his pipe on the table.  A curious feeling of guilt came over him as he moved toward the box in which Jacques had placed the silken scarf.  His breath came quickly; in the dark his eyes shone; a tingling thrill of strange pleasure shot through him as his fingers touched the thing for which they were searching.  He drew the scarf out, and returned to the stove with it, crushing it in both his hands.  The sweetness of it came to him again like the woman’s breath.  It was the sweetness of her hair, of the golden coils massed in the firelight; a part of the woman herself, of her glorious eyes, her lips, her face—­and suddenly he crushed the fabric to his own face, and stood there, trembling in the darkness, while Jacques Pierrot slept and the storm wailed and moaned over his head.  For he knew—­now—­that he would do more for this woman than Jacques Pierrot could ever do; more, perhaps, than even the colonel, her husband, would do.  His heart seemed bursting with a new and terrible pain, and the truth at last seemed to rise and choke him.  He loved her.  He loved this woman, the wife of another man.  He loved her as he had never dreamed that he could love a woman, and with the scarf still smothering his lips and face he stood for many minutes, silent and motionless, gathering himself slowly from out of the appalling depths into which he had allowed himself to plunge.

Then he folded the scarf, and instead of returning it to the box, put it in one of the pockets of his coat.

“Pierrot won’t care,” he excused himself.  “And it’s the only thing, little girl—­the only thing—­I’ll ever have—­of you.”