How-ha was only an Indian woman, bred of a long line of fish-eating, meat-rending carnivores, and her ethics¹ were as crude and simple as her blood. But long contact with the whites had given her an insight into their way of looking at things, and though she grunted² contemptuously in her secret soul, she none the less understood their way perfectly³. Ten years previous she had cooked for Jacob Welse, and served him in one fashion or another ever since; and when on a dreary⁴ January morning she opened the front door in response to the deep-tongued knocker, even her stolid⁵ presence was shaken as she recognized the visitor. Not that the average man or woman would have so recognized. But How-ha's faculties⁶ of observing and remembering details had been developed in a hard school where death dealt his blow to the lax and life saluted⁷ the vigilant⁸.  
How-ha looked up and down the woman who stood before her. Through the heavy veil she could barely distinguish the flash of the eyes, while the hood⁹ of the parka effectually concealed¹⁰ the hair, and the parka proper the particular outlines of the body. But How-ha paused and looked again. There was something familiar in the vague general outline. She quested back to the shrouded¹¹ head again, and knew the unmistakable poise¹². Then How-ha's eyes went blear as she traversed the simple windings¹³ of her own brain, inspecting the bare shelves taciturnly stored with the impressions of a meagre life. No disorder¹⁴; no confused mingling¹⁵ of records; no devious¹⁶ and interminable impress of complex emotions, tangled¹⁷ theories, and bewildering abstractions—nothing but simple facts, neatly¹⁸ classified and conveniently collated¹⁹. Unerringly from the stores of the past she picked and chose and put together in the instant present, till obscurity dropped from the woman before her, and she knew her, word and deed and look and history.
 
"Much better you go 'way quickety-quick," How-ha informed her.
 
"Miss Welse. I wish to see her."
 
The strange woman spoke²⁰ in firm, even tones which betokened²¹ the will behind, but which failed to move How-ha.
 
"Much better you go," she repeated, stolidly²².
 
"Here, take this to Frona Welse, and—ah! would you!" (thrusting her knee between the door and jamb) "and leave the door open."
 
How-ha scowled²³, but took the note; for she could not shake off the grip of the ten years of servitude to the superior race.
 
May I see you?
 
LUCILE.
So the note ran. Frona glanced up expectantly at the Indian woman.
 
"Um kick toes outside," How-ha explained. "Me tell um go 'way quickety-quick? Eh? You t'ink yes? Um no good. Um—"
 
"No. Take her,"—Frona was thinking quickly,—"no; bring her up here."
 
"Much better—"
 
"Go!"
 
How-ha grunted, and yielded up the obedience²⁴ she could not withhold²⁵; though, as she went down the stairs to the door, in a tenebrous, glimmering²⁶ way she wondered that the accident of white skin or swart made master or servant as the case might be.
 
In the one sweep of vision, Lucile took in Frona smiling with extended hand in the foreground, the dainty dressing-table, the simple finery, the thousand girlish evidences; and with the sweet wholesomeness²⁷ of it pervading²⁸ her nostrils²⁹, her own girlhood rose up and smote³⁰ her. Then she turned a bleak³¹ eye and cold ear on outward things.
 
"I am glad you came," Frona was saying. "I have so wanted to see you again, and—but do get that heavy parka off, please. How thick it is, and what splendid fur and workmanship!"
 
"Yes, from Siberia." A present from St. Vincent, Lucile felt like adding, but said instead, "The Siberians have not yet learned to scamp their work, you know."
 
She sank down into the low-seated rocker with a native grace which could not escape the beauty-loving eye of the girl, and with proud-poised head and silent tongue listened to Frona as the minutes ticked away, and observed with impersonal³² amusement Frona's painful toil³³ at making conversation.
 
"What has she come for?" Frona asked herself, as she talked on furs and weather and indifferent things.
 
"If you do not say something, Lucile, I shall get nervous, soon," she ventured at last in desperation. "Has anything happened?"
 
Lucile went over to the mirror and picked up, from among the trinkets beneath, a tiny open-work miniature of Frona. "This is you? How old were you?"
 
"Sixteen."
 
"A sylph, but a cold northern one."
 
"The blood warms late with us," Frona reproved; "but is—"
 
"None the less warm for that," Lucile laughed. "And how old are you now?"
 
"Twenty."
 
"Twenty," Lucile repeated, slowly. "Twenty," and resumed her seat.
"You are twenty. And I am twenty-four."
"So little difference as that!"
 
"But our blood warms early." Lucile voiced her reproach across the unfathomable gulf³⁴ which four years could not plumb³⁵.
 
Frona could hardly hide her vexation. Lucile went over and looked at the miniature again and returned.
 
"What do you think of love?" she asked abruptly³⁶, her face softening³⁷ unheralded into a smile.
 
"Love?" the girl quavered.
 
"Yes, love. What do you know about it? What do you think of it?"
 
A flood of definitions, glowing and rosy³⁸, sped to her tongue, but
Frona swept them aside and answered, "Love is immolation³⁹."
"Very good—sacrifice. And, now, does it pay?"
 
"Yes, it pays. Of course it pays. Who can doubt it?"
 
Lucile's eyes twinkled amusedly.
 
"Why do you smile?" Frona asked.
 
"Look at me, Frona." Lucile stood up and her face blazed. "I am twenty-four. Not altogether a fright; not altogether a dunce. I have a heart. I have good red blood and warm. And I have loved. I do not remember the pay. I know only that I have paid."
 
"And in the paying were paid," Frona took up warmly. "The price was the reward. If love be fallible, yet you have loved; you have done, you have served. What more would you?"
 
"The whelpage love," Lucile sneered⁴¹.
 
"Oh! You are unfair."
 
"I do you justice," Lucile insisted firmly. "You would tell me that you know; that you have gone unveiled and seen clear-eyed; that without placing more than lips to the brim you have divined the taste of the dregs, and that the taste is good. Bah! The whelpage love! And, oh, Frona, I know; you are full womanly and broad, and lend no ear to little things, but"—she tapped a slender finger to forehead—"it is all here. It is a heady brew⁴², and you have smelled the fumes⁴³ overmuch. But drain the dregs, turn down the glass, and say that it is good. No, God forbid!" she cried, passionately⁴⁴. "There are good loves. You should find no masquerade, but one fair and shining."
 
Frona was up to her old trick,—their common one,—and her hand slid down Lucile's arm till hand clasped in hand. "You say things which I feel are wrong, yet may not answer. I can, but how dare I? I dare not put mere⁴⁵ thoughts against your facts. I, who have lived so little, cannot in theory give the lie to you who have lived so much—"
 
"'For he who lives more lives than one, more lives than one must die.'"
 
From out of her pain, Lucile spoke the words of her pain, and Frona, throwing arms about her, sobbed⁴⁶ on her breast in understanding. As for Lucile, the slight nervous ingathering of the brows above her eyes smoothed out, and she pressed the kiss of motherhood, lightly and secretly, on the other's hair. For a space,—then the brows ingathered, the lips drew firm, and she put Frona from her.
 
"You are going to marry Gregory St. Vincent?"
 
Frona was startled. It was only a fortnight old, and not a word had been breathed. "How do you know?"
 
"You have answered." Lucile watched Frona's open face and the bold running advertisement, and felt as the skilled fencer who fronts a tyro⁴⁷, weak of wrist, each opening naked to his hand. "How do I know?" She laughed harshly. "When a man leaves one's arms suddenly, lips wet with last kisses and mouth areek with last lies!............