Now she drew away from
him shyly. The conventions in which she had been brought up asserted
themselves. Sheba remembered that they had been carried by the high wave
of their emotion past all the usual preliminaries. He had not even told
her that he loved her. An absurd little fear obtruded itself into her
happiness. Had she rushed into his arms like a lovesick girl, taking it
for granted that he cared for her?
"You--came to look for us?" she asked, with the little shy stiffness of
embarrassment.
"For you--yes."
He could not take his eyes from her. It seemed to him that a bird was
singing in his heart the gladness he could not express. He had for many
hours pushed from his mind pictures of her lying white and rigid on the
snow. Instead she stood beside him, her delicate beauty vivid as the
flush of a flame.
"Did they telephone that we were lost?"
"Yes. I was troubled when the storm grew. I could not sleep. So I called
up the roadhouse by long distance. They had not heard from the stage.
Later I called again. When I could stand it no longer, I started."
"Not on foot?"
"No. With Holt's dog team. He is back there. His leg is broken. A
snow-slide crushed him this morning where we camped.
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