"
So the difficulty was solved, in a way, and Frona talked on about
herself, with a successfully feigned girlhood innocence, as though she
did not appreciate the other or understand her ill-concealed yearning
for that which she might not have, but which was Frona's.
"There is the trail you are trying to connect with." They had rounded
the last of the cliffs, and Frona's companion pointed ahead to where
the walls receded and wrinkled to a gorge, out of which the sleds drew
the firewood across the river to town. "I shall leave you there," she
concluded.
"But are you not going back to Dawson?" Frona queried. "It is growing
late, and you had better not linger."
"No . . . I . . ."
Her painful hesitancy brought Frona to a realization of her own
thoughtlessness. But she had made the step, and she knew she could not
retrace it.
"We will go back together," she said, bravely. And in candid
all-knowledge of the other, "I do not mind."
Then it was that the blood surged into the woman's cold face, and her
hand went out to the girl in the old, old way.
"No, no, I beg of you," she stammered. "I beg of you . . . I . . . I
prefer to continue my walk a little farther. See! Some one is coming
now!"
By this time they had reached the wood-trail, and Frona's face was
flaming as the other's had flamed. A light sled, dogs a-lope and
swinging down out of the gorge, was just upon them.
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