beautiful thing in the world, next to--"

He paused, and she finished for him.

"Next to one other girl-- who is yours."

"No, I wasn't going to say that. You won't think I mean wrong, will
you, if I tell you? I was going to say next to-- you. For you've come
out of the blizzard-- like an angel to give me new hope. I was sort of
broke when you came. If you disappeared now and I never saw you again
I'd go back and fight the rest of my time out, an' dream of pleasant
things. Gawd! Do you know a man has to be put up here before he knows
that life isn't the sun an' the moon an' the stars an' the air we
breathe. It's woman-- just woman."

He was returning the letters to his pocket. The woman's voice was
clear and gentle. To Billy it rose like sweetest music above the
crackling of the fire and the murmuring of the wind in the spruce
tops.

"Men like you-- ought to have a woman to care for," she said. "He was
like that."

"You mean--" His eyes sought the long, dark box.

"Yes-- he was like that."

"I know how you feel," he said; and for a moment he did not look at
her. "I've gone through-- a lot of it. Father an' mother and a sister.
Mother was the last, and I wasn't much more than a kid-- eighteen, I