She was tying on a mink cap by winding a woollen scarf about her head.
'Miss Madge! Miss King! It is perfectly intolerable! It--it is intolerable!' He stepped nearer as he spoke.

A thought came over him that even the conventional title of 'Miss' which he had given her was wholly inappropriate in a situation so strong--that he and she, merely as man and woman, as rational beings, were met together in a wilderness where conventions were folly.

'I cannot allow you to risk your life in this way.' There was a tense emphasis in his words; he felt the natural authority of the protector over the tender thing to be protected, the intimate authority which stress of circumstance may give.
She dropped her hands from tying the scarf under her chin, returning for his words a look of mingled curiosity, indecision, and distrust.
Quick as she looked upon him, his mind's eye looked upon himself; there he stood in grotesque undress, bound around with the cords of an extraordinary disgrace.

He blamed himself at the moment for not having had his hair cut more recently, for he knew that it stood in a wild shock above his head, and he felt that it dangled in his eyes.

Then a gust of emotion, the momentary desire for laughter or groans of vexation, rose and choked his utterance, and in the minute that he was mute the girl, sitting down upon a low stool, began tightening the strings of her moccasins, which, after the first putting on, had relaxed with the warmth of the feet.