Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/64

50 "I'll wire to-night to charter any ship you say."

"Price! You understand I don't love you!"

"I'm doing this because I know as soon as you get Eric Hedon out of your mind you will love me!"

She fought herself free from his grasp and, turning from him, looked down intently. Before her she saw Eric and his companion in the north—two men alone on a barren land, starving, desolate, dying, one of them at least still smiling, cheerful, looking day after day for signs of a ship coming up from the south.

She turned back. "I accept," she said quietly to Latham.

"You mean you promise?"

"But I, too, have one condition, Price!"

"Condition?"

"That I am the one to be satisfied, fairly, that Eric is dead. If I am to give myself for this ship into the north, I must go on it; and I must be sure that Eric is lost—if we don't find him. You are sure he is dead already."

"You go upon the ship, Margaret?"

"I must."