But among it all, and through it all, she had asked him about _himself_.
And he had responded. Until now he did not realize how much he had
confided in her. It seemed to him that the very soul of this slim and
beautiful girl who had walked at his side had urged him on to the
indiscretion of personal confidence. He had seemed to feel her heart
beating with his own as he described his beloved land under the Endicott
Mountains, with its vast tundras, his herds, and his people. There, he
had told her, a new world was in the making, and the glow in her eyes
and the thrilling something in her voice had urged him on until he
forgot that Rossland was waiting at the ship's gangway to see when they
returned. He had built up for her his castles in the air, and the
miracle of it was that she had helped him to build them. He had
described for her the change that was creeping slowly over Alaska, the
replacement of mountain trails by stage and automobile highways, the
building of railroads, the growth of cities where tents had stood a few
years before. It was then, when he had pictured progress and
civilization and the breaking down of nature's last barriers before
science and invention, that he had seen a cloud of doubt in her
gray eyes.
And now, as they stood on the deck of the _Nome_ looking at the white
peaks of the mountains dissolving into the lavender mist of twilight,
doubt and perplexity were still deeper in her eyes, and she said:
"I would always love tents and old trails and nature's barriers.
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