"
She raised her head, and in the dusk her pale face looked up at the
ghost-peaks of the mountains still visible through the thickening gloom
of evening. "I am glad you told me about Belinda Mulrooney," she said.
"I am beginning to understand, and it gives me courage to think of a
woman like her. She could fight, couldn't she? She could make a
man's fight?"
"Yes, and did make it."
"And she had no money to give her power. Her last dollar, you told me,
she flung into the Yukon for luck."
"Yes, at Dawson. It was the one thing between her and hunger."
She raised her hand, and on it he saw gleaming faintly the single ring
which she wore. Slowly she drew it from her finger.
"Then this, too, for luck--the luck of Mary Standish," she laughed
softly, and flung the ring into the sea.
She faced him, as if expecting the necessity of defending what she had
done. "It isn't melodrama," she said. "I mean it. And I believe in it. I
want something of mine to lie at the bottom of the sea in this gateway
to Skagway, just as Belinda Mulrooney wanted her dollar to rest forever
at the bottom of the Yukon."
She gave him the hand from which she had taken the ring, and for a
moment the warm thrill of it lay in his own. "Thank you for the
wonderful afternoon you have given me, Mr. Holt.
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