She insisted that he eat the last piece, and the last pickle in the bottle she had opened.
When he finished, she said: "Now--I know." "What ?" "That you have spoken the truth, that you have come from a long time in the North, and that I need not fear--what I did fear." "And that fear?
Tell me--" She answered calmly, and in her eyes and the lines of her face came a look of despair which she had almost hidden from him until now.
"I was thinking during those thirty minutes you away," she said.

"And I realized what folly it was in me to tell you as much as I have.

Back there, for just one insane moment, I thought that you might help me in a situation which is as terrible as any you may have faced in your months of Arctic night.

But it is impossible.

All that I can ask of you now--all that I can demand of you to prove that you are the man you said you were--is that you leave me, and never whisper a word into another ear of our meeting.