fear was gone out of her eyes now. It was impossible for him not to smile
at her loveliness. He had always been proud of that. He reached up a thin
hand and plucked tenderly at the shining little tendrils of gold that
crept out from under her hood.

"I wish you wouldn't, dear," he pleaded.

How pathetically white, and thin, and weak he was! She kissed him again
and turned quickly to hide the mist in her eyes. At the door she blew him
a kiss from the tip of her big fur mitten, and as she went out she heard
him say in the thin, strange voice that was so unlike the old Peter:

"Don't be long, Dolores."

She stood silently for a few moments to make sure that no one would see
her. Then she moved swiftly to the ice bridge and out into the
star-lighted ghostliness of the night. Wapi followed close behind her,
and dropping a hand to her side she called softly to him. In an instant
Wapi's muzzle was against her mitten, and his great body quivered with
joy at her direct speech to him. She saw the response in his red eyes and
stopped to stroke him with both mittened hands, and over and over again
she spoke his name. "Wapi--Wapi--Wapi." He whined. She could feel him
under her touch as if alive with an electrical force. Her eyes shone. In
the white starlight there was a new emotion in her face. She had found a
friend, the one friend she and Peter had, and it made her braver.

At no time had she actually been afraid--for herself. It was for Peter.
And she was not afraid now. Her cheeks flushed with exertion and her
breath came quickly as she neared Blake's cabin. Twice she had made
excuses to go ashore--just because she was curious, she had said--and she