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.
"Your letter?
At Nome ?" He repeated the words, shaking his head.

"No." "And all this time--you have been thinking--I was dead ?" He nodded, because the thickness in his throat made it the easier form of speech.
"I wrote you there," she said.