guess-- but it don't seem much more than yesterday. When you come up
here and you don't see the sun for months nor a white face for a year
or more it brings up all those things pretty much as though they
happened only a little while ago.'"

"All of them are-- dead?" she asked.

"All but one. She wrote to me for a long time, and I thought she'd
keep her word. Pelly-- that's Pelliter-- thinks we've just had a
misunderstanding, and that she'll write again. I haven't told him that
she turned me down to marry another fellow. I didn't want to make him
think any unpleasant things about his own girl. You're apt to do that
when you're almost dying of loneliness."

The woman's eyes were shining. She leaned a little toward him.

"You should be glad," she said. "If she turned you down she wouldn't
have been worthy of you-- afterward. She wasn't a true woman. If she
had been, her love wouldn't have grown cold because you were away. It
mustn't spoil your faith-- because that is-- beautiful."

He had put a hand into his pocket again, and drew out now a thin
package wrapped in buckskin. His face was like a boy's.

"I might have-- if I hadn't met you," he said. "I'd like to let you
know-- some way-- what you've done for me. You and this."

He had unfolded the buckskin, and gave it to her. In it were the big
blue petals and dried, stem of a blue flower.