In restrained fury Czar knew that he was being gently ridiculed by this visionary giant. “Sometimes lately, Thor, it seems to me you’re showing a kind of early senility. Try to keep your mind on Christine, will you, for a minute. Now, during the summers—–”

“I’m glad you brought that up, Czar. I was just coming to it. Christine will spend her summer vacations with me, and the winter ones, too. We’ll travel, vacation times. She’s going to see Alaska and hear Alaska. For two years she’s going to eat and drink Alaska. She’s going to love it and hate it, like all good Alaskans. But when she’s finished she’ll know Alaska from Point Barrow down to Juneau; from the North Pole to the Banana Belt. Then she’ll be ready for your Outside crowd. Ready. Armed. Prepared to make her own choice. And that’s what you’ll have to agree to let her do. You have agreed.”

“I could stop you now, before you ever start.”

“No you couldn’t, Czar. Look!” He stretched his two great arms straight before him at shoulder level, hands parallel to the floor, fingers outstretched. “See that! No tremor there. No shakes.”

Czar tapped his own forehead, eying Thor significantly.

“Nor here,” Thor added, and brought his hands up to touch his brow.

Bridie managed to piece together this conversation in which she had had no part. “Do you know what they’re like?” she said to Addie Barnett that autumn of Chris’s freshman year. “They act just like a husband and wife that’s divorced. Pulled apart but kind of sticking together because of the child. And in the end the child ruined. But I’m going to try to see to it that Chris ain’t.”

A strange pair—the massive old man and the lovely young girl—as they traveled the next two years up and down this glittering almost mythical world of the Arctic. Sometimes Bridie joined the two, a vivacious and gallant third in her modish clothes that defied cold, discomfort and occasional danger.

“I can rough it looking civilized,” she argued, stoutly. “Time I was up to Ottawa and Montreal, three winters ago, I didn’t see anybody going around dressed like bears. Sweden either, I bet, or Finland, though I’ve never been. But I will, someday.”

“Alaska isn’t like those places, Bridie, really,” Thor said, gently.

“It will be. And better. Give it a chance, that’s what it needs.”

Christine learned.

Thor talked. Thor pointed to this and that and those. He was not too voluble, not too insistent, he was rarely prosy or boring. He spoke with passion and power and knowledge and purpose. He talked as a lover talks of his beloved. This was his life, his dream, his Alaska.

Casually Thor would say, “The Eskimos are dying off, of course. Killed by civilization. Overheated houses, canned food, alcohol, motors, starches, inaction, infection.”

“But some of them—there are a lot who—like Ross Guildenstern, for example.”

“Yes, the breeds survive pretty well. That mixture of Eskimo and Scandinavian stock, or Russian stock, or German or English or American. That is pretty sturdy stuff.”