He turned from the fire to Sheba. It was characteristic of him that he plunged straight at what he wanted to say.
"I've asked to see you alone, Miss O'Neill, because I want to make a confession and restitution--to begin with," he told her abruptly.
She had a sense of suddenly stilled pulses. "That sounds very serious." The young woman smiled faintly.
His face of chiseled granite masked all emotion. It kept under lock and key the insurgent impulses that moved him when he looked into the sloe eyes charged with reserve. Back of them, he felt, was the mystery of purity, of maidenhood. He longed to know her better, to find out and to appropriate for himself the woman that lay behind the fine veil of flesh. She seemed to him delicate as a flame and as vivid. There would come a day when her innocent, passional nature would respond to the love of a man as a waiting harp does to skillful fingers.
"My story goes away back to the Klondike days. I told you that I knew your father on Frenchman Creek, but I didn't say much about knowing him on Bonanza."
"Mr. Strong has told me something about the days on Bonanza, and I knew you would tell me more some day--when you wanted to speak about it." She was seated in a low chair and the white throat lifted toward him was round as that of a bird.
"Your father was among the first of those who stampeded to Bonanza. He and Strong took up a claim together. I bought out the interest of your father."
His masterful eyes fastened to hers. "I didn't tell you that I took advantage of him. He was--not well. I used that against him in the bargaining. He wanted ready money, and I tempted him."
"Yes. I cheated him." He was resolved to gloss over nothing, to offer no excuses. "I didn't know there was gold on his claim, but I had what we call a hunch. I took his claim without giving value received."
It was her turn now to look into the fire and think. From the letters of her father, from talks with old-timers she knew how in the stampedes every man's hand had been for himself, how keen-edged had been the passion for gold, a veritable lust that corroded the souls of men.
"But--I don't understand." Her brave, steady eyes looked directly into those of Macdonald. "If he felt you had--done him a wrong--why did he come to you when he was ill?"