“You—­and your suspicions and your brutality,” she went on, her voice trembling a little as she drew herself up straight and tense before him.  “I wasn’t going to tell you, Mr. Holt.  But you have given me the opportunity, and it may do you good—­after tomorrow.  I came to you because I foolishly misjudged you.  I thought you were different, like your mountains.  I made a great gamble, and set you up on a pedestal as clean and unafraid and believing all things good until you found them bad—­and I lost.  I was terribly mistaken.  Your first thoughts of me when I came to your cabin were suspicious.  You were angry and afraid.  Yes, afraid—­fearful of something happening which you didn’t want to happen.  You thought, almost, that I was unclean.  And you believed I was a liar, and told me so.  It wasn’t fair, Mr. Holt.  It wasn’t fair.  There were things which I couldn’t explain to you, but I told you Rossland knew.  I didn’t keep everything back.  And I believed you were big enough to think that I was not dishonoring you with my—­friendship, even though I came to your cabin.  Oh, I had that much faith in myself—­I didn’t think I would be mistaken for something unclean and lying!”

“Good God!” he cried.  “Listen to me—­Miss Standish—­”

She was gone, so suddenly that his movement to intercept her was futile, and she passed through the door before he could reach her.  Again he called her name, but her footsteps were almost running up the passageway.  He dropped back, his blood cold, his hands clenched in the darkness, and his face as white as the girl’s had been.  Her words had held him stunned and mute.  He saw himself stripped naked, as she believed him to be, and the thing gripped him with a sort of horror.  And she was wrong.  He had followed what he believed to be good judgment and common sense.  If, in doing that, he had been an accursed fool—­

Determinedly he started for her cabin, his mind set upon correcting her malformed judgment of him.  There was no light coming under her door.  When he knocked, there was no answer from within.  He waited, and tried again, listening for a sound of movement.  And each moment he waited he was readjusting himself.  He was half glad, in the end, that the door did not open.  He believed Miss Standish was inside, and she would undoubtedly accept the reason for his coming without an apology in words.

He went to his cabin, and his mind became increasingly persistent in its disapproval of the wrong viewpoint she had taken of him.  He was not comfortable, no matter how he looked at the thing.  For her clear eyes, her smoothly glorious hair, and the pride and courage with which she had faced him remained with him overpoweringly.  He could not get away from the vision of her as she had stood against the door with tears like diamonds on her cheeks.  Somewhere he had missed fire.  He knew it.  Something had escaped him which he could not understand.  And she was holding him accountable.