"Forgive me. I am sorry."
It was not anger that he saw in her face. It was, instead, a mingling of
shock and physical hurt; a measurement of him now, as she looked at him,
which recalled her to him as she had stood that night with her back
against his cabin door. Yet he was not trying to piece things together.
Even subconsciously that was impossible, for all life in him was
centered in the one stupendous thought that she was not dead, but
living, and he did not wonder why. There was no question in his mind as
to the manner in which she had been saved from the sea. He felt a
weakness in his limbs; he wanted to laugh, to cry out, to give himself
up to strange inclinations for a moment or two, like a woman. Such was
the shock of his happiness. It crept in a living fluid through his
flesh. She saw it in the swift change of the rock-like color in his
face, and his quicker breathing, and was a little amazed, but Alan was
too completely possessed by the one great thing to discover the
astonishment growing in her eyes.
"You are alive," he said, giving voice again to the one thought pounding
in his brain. "_Alive!_"
It seemed to him that word wanted to utter itself an impossible number
of times. Then the truth that was partly dawning came entirely to
the girl.
"Mr. Holt, you did not receive my letter at Nome?" she asked.
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