The Alaskan by James Oliver Curwood — Read

Not until early twilight came with the deep shadows of the western mountains, and the _Nome_ was churning slowly back through the narrow water-trails to the open Pacific, did the significance of that afternoon fully impress itself upon Alan. For hours he had surrendered himself to an impulse which he could not understand, and which in ordinary moments he would not have excused. He had taken Mary Standish ashore. For two hours she had walked at his side, asking him questions and listening to him as no other had ever questioned him or listened to him before. He had shown her Skagway. Between the mountains he pictured the wind-racked cañon where Skagway grew from one tent to hundreds in a day, from hundreds to thousands in a week; he visioned for her the old days of romance, adventure, and death; he told her of Soapy Smith and his gang of outlaws, and side by side they stood over Soapy's sunken grave as the first somber shadows of the mountains grew upon them.

But among it all, and through it all, she had asked him about _himself_. And he had responded. Until now he did not realize how much he had confided in her. It seemed to him that the very soul of this slim and beautiful girl who had walked at his side had urged him on to the indiscretion of personal confidence. He had seemed to feel her heart beating with his own as he described his beloved land under the Endicott Mountains, with its vast tundras, his herds, and his people. There, he had told her, a new world was in the making, and the glow in her eyes and the thrilling something in her voice had urged him on until he forgot that Rossland was waiting at the ship's gangway to see when they returned. He had built up for her his castles in the air, and the miracle of it was that she had helped him to build them. He had described for her the change that was creeping slowly over Alaska, the replacement of mountain trails by stage and automobile highways, the building of railroads, the growth of cities where tents had stood a few years before. It was then, when he had pictured progress and civilization and the breaking down of nature's last barriers before science and invention, that he had seen a cloud of doubt in her gray eyes.