She was really
an extraordinary young woman, he decided.
She was traveling alone. For several months she had been living with
old friends of the family on Stuart Island, close by the roaring
tiderace of the Euclataw Rapids. She was returning there, she told
Hollister, after three weeks or so in Vancouver. The steamer would
dock about daylight the following morning. When Hollister offered to
see her ashore and to her destination, she accepted without any
reservations. It comforted Hollister's sadly bruised ego to observe
that she even seemed a trifle pleased.
"I have once or twice got a steward to get me ashore and put me in a
taxi," she said. "But if you don't mind, Mr. Hollister."
And Hollister most decidedly did not mind. Doris Cleveland had shot
like a pleasant burst of colorful light across the grayest period of
his existence, and he was loath to let her go.
He dropped off to sleep at last, to dream, strangely enough and with
astonishing vividness, of the cabin among the great cedars with the
snow banked white outside the door.
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