“I will let you know.”

Their hands clasped.  Looking into her eyes, Keith saw what told him his was not the greatest cross to bear.  Miriam Kirkstone also was fighting for her life, and as he turned to leave her, he said: 

“While there is life there is hope.  In settling my score with Shan Tung I believe that I shall also settle yours.  It is a strong hunch, Miss Kirkstone, and it’s holding me tight.  Ten days, Shan Tung, and then—­”

He left her, smiling.  Miriam Kirkstone watched him go, her slim hands clutched at her breast, her eyes aglow with a new thought, a new hope; and as he heard the gate slam behind him, a sobbing cry rose in her throat, and she reached out her hands as if to call him back, for something was telling her that through this man lay the way to her salvation.

And her lips were moaning softly, “Ten days—­ten days—­and then—­what?”

XIX

In those ten days all the wonders of June came up out of the south.  Life pulsed with a new and vibrant force.  The crimson fire-flowers, first of wild blooms to come after snow and frost, splashed the green spaces with red.  The forests took on new colors, the blue of the sky grew nearer, and in men’s veins the blood ran with new vigor and anticipations.  To Keith they were all this and more.  Four years along the rim of the Arctic had made it possible for him to drink to the full the glory of early summer along the Saskatchewan.  And to Mary Josephine it was all new.  Never had she seen a summer like this that was dawning, that most wonderful of all the summers in the world, which comes in June along the southern edge of the Northland.

Keith had played his promised part.  It was not difficult for him to wipe away the worst of McDowell’s suspicions regarding Miss Kirkstone, for McDowell was eager to believe.  When Keith told him that Miriam was on the verge of a nervous breakdown simply because of certain trouble into which Shan Tung had inveigled her brother, and that everything would be straightened out the moment Shan Tung returned from Winnipeg, the iron man seized his hands in a sudden burst of relief and gratitude.

“But why didn’t she confide in me, Conniston?” he complained.  “Why didn’t she confide in me?” The anxiety in his voice, its note of disappointment, were almost boyish.

Keith was prepared.  “Because—­”

He hesitated, as if projecting the thing in his mind.  “McDowell, I’m in a delicate position.  You must understand without forcing me to say too much.  You are the last man in the world Miss Kirkstone wants to know about her trouble until she has triumphed, and it is over.  Delicacy, perhaps; a woman’s desire to keep something she is ashamed of from the one man she looks up to above all other men—­to keep it away from him until she has cleared herself so that there is no suspicion.  McDowell, if I were you, I’d be proud of her for that.”