Tempest he did not care to look at. Through those long steamer days on the Athabaska Dick had seen more of Tempest than he ever wished to see again, and he was dreading the plunge into the wilderness as he had not dreaded the future ever before in all his life. For the fret of that impotent rage which we feel only against those whom we have wronged and who will not give us the satisfaction of justifying ourselves was on Dick, by day and by wakeful night.
Of what Tempest thought through these weeks which held them so closely together Dick did not know. There was nothing in him which could interpret the heart of this man to whom the higher and the deeper places of life were open. Of late he had sometimes even grown to fear Tempest. The utter self-restraint of the still man who walked with him by day and sat beside him over the evening fires when neither the pipe-smoke or the long loneliness could knit them together into more than casual speech had its effect on his nerves and on his heart. Tempest was completely just to him; completely courteous and kind. But Dick understood well that it was the gentleman in Tempest which owed these things to himself; not the friend which owed them to Dick. Not once did he suffer Dick to look below the surface of his quiet manner; and Dick, knowing the savagery in himself which would have had satisfaction for a wrong done him, grew uneasy and resentful, and found it daily more difficult to keep Tempest out of his thoughts.
It was Dick's nature to demand an eye for an eye, and until now he had always felt contempt for the man who asked less. But he could not feel contempt for Tempest. He knew what he had done to this man; he knew the torment which he had given him to bear, and he knew that Tempest was still the stronger. He would not soon forget his good-bye to Andree on the bank at Grey Wolf, with Tempest standing by. And he knew that the fear which walked with Tempest eternally was the fear for this girl whom Dick had waked to the realisation of love and dependence and had flung away to seek helplessly and blindly for what she could find instead. There could be no forgiveness for such a thing as this, and Dick did not expect it.
