Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/179

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which made him feel that the time was at hand when he might storm the citadel of her heart—not even to her would he flash a signal of success.

It was to get the most shock-value out of his success that Harrington refrained, even from telling Billie that he was starting for home. But Lahleet met him at the dock. He was not surprised simply because he had become accustomed to her intuitions and the sublime faith with which she obeyed them—rested all upon them.

"Lahleet!" he whispered into her ear, in a voice hoarse with happiness. "It's done! It's done—all but the clerk's work—it's done! A few documents to engross, some seals and wax and scrawling signatures that are a mere matter of form and we have it."

"Oh!" exclaimed the girl in low joy-mad tones. "Oh! you great White Chief!" In an ecstasy of pleasure over his triumph—perhaps more for him than for her Indians—she seized his hands, pressed them and slipped away. It was a contact so brief that probably no eye in the jostling throng took note of it, any more than Harrington took note of that starved light of something tenderer than friendship in the dark, passionate eyes of the little habitant of the twilight land between aboriginal blood and the untainted strain of the white man.

Henry had come down on the night boat. It was but eight o'clock in the morning when he stepped upon the dock, yet he knew that he should find John Boland at his desk even at this hour, for Old Two Blades was an early riser; and the young man could not suppress a nervous tremor as he crossed familiar thresholds to stand at length before a door whose unmarked