She drew away from him, with a lingering of her finger-tips on his arm, and the little heart-beat in her throat revealed itself clearly again as on that night in his cabin.
"I have been thinking of you back there, every hour, every step," he said, making a gesture toward the tundras over which he had come.

"Then I heard the firecrackers and saw the flag.

It is almost as if I had created you!" A quick answer was on her lips, but she stopped it.
"And when I found you here, and you didn't fade away like a ghost, I thought something was wrong with my head.

Something must have been wrong, I guess, or I wouldn't have done _that_.

You see, it puzzled me that a ghost should be setting off firecrackers--and I suppose that was the first impulse I had of making sure you were real." A voice came from the edge of the cottonwoods beyond them.