"I laughed to encourage her, and because the chills were still obstinate, I hurried to unstrap my blanket to wrap around her. And I only remembered the hat when it dropped at her feet. She did not cry out but sat like a marble woman, with her eyes fixed on it. Then, after a while, she bent and lifted it and began to shape it gently with her numb little fingers. She was beyond tears, and the white stillness of her face made me more helpless than any sobbing. I could think of nothing to say to comfort her and turned away, looking off in the direction of the cabin. It seemed suddenly a long distance off. "Finally she spoke, slowly at first, convincing herself. 'Jerry did bring it across the ice-bridge. He found Louis and stayed to watch, as I thought. Sir, now tell me the truth.' "I turned back to her, and it came bluntly enough. Then I explained it was not an accident or anything terrible; that the end had come easily, probably the previous night, of heart failure. 'But I couldn't nerve myself to tell you up there,' I said, 'with all those miles of hard travel before you; and I am going back to-morrow, as I promised, to bring him through.' "She had nothing to say but rose and held out her hand. In a little while I began to lead her down through the belt of spruce. I moved very slowly, choosing steps, for she paid no attention to her footing. Her hand rested limply in mine, and she stumbled, like one whose light has gone out in a dark place." Tisdale's story was finished, but Miss Armitage waited, listening. It was as though in the silence she heard his unexpressed thoughts. "But her life was wrecked," she said at last. "She never could forget. Think of it! The terror of those weeks; the long-drawn suspense. She should not have stayed in Alaska. She should have gone home at the beginning. She was not able to help her husband. Her influence was lost." "True," Tisdale answered slowly. "Long before that day I found her, she must have known it was a losing fight. But the glory of the battle is not always to the victor. And she blamed herself that she had not gone north with her husband at the start. You see she loved him, and love with that kind of woman means self-sacrifice; she counted it a privilege to have been there, to have faced the worst with him, done what she could." Miss Armitage straightened, lifting her head with that movement of a flower shaken on its stem. "Every woman owes it to herself to keep her self-respect," she said. "She owes it to her family--the past and future generations of her race--to make the most of her life."