big as mountains, and one night I dreamed of chasing a pickle with
legs for hours, and when at last I caught up with the thing it had
turned into an iceberg. Please let me have just pickles and cake!"

Behind the lightness of his words she saw the truth--the craving
of famine. Ashamed, he tried to hide it from her. He refused the
third huge piece of cake, but she reached over and placed it in
his hand. 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.