He was looking at her, trying to understand the inexplicable something about her.  She knew what was in his mind, because the strangely thrilling emotion that possessed him could not keep its betrayal from his eyes.  The color was fading slowly out of her cheeks; her lips grew a little tense, yet in her attitude of suspense and of waiting there was no longer a suspicion of embarrassment, no trace of fear, and no sign that a moment was at hand when her confidence was on the ebb.  In this moment Alan did not think of John Graham.  It seemed to him that she was like a child again, the child who had come to him in his cabin, and who had stood with her back against his cabin door, entreating him to achieve the impossible; an angel, almost, with her smooth, shining hair, her clear, beautiful eyes, her white throat which waited with its little heart-throb for him to beat down the fragile defense which now lay in the greater power of his own hands.  The inequality of it, and the pitilessness of what had been in his mind to say and do, together with an inundating sense of his own brute mastery, swept over him, and in sudden desperation he reached out his hands toward her and cried: 

“Mary Standish, in God’s name tell me the truth.  Tell me why you have come up here!”

“I have come,” she said, looking at him steadily, “because I know that a man like you, when he loves a woman, will fight for her and protect her even though he may not possess her.”

“But you didn’t know that—­not until—­the cottonwoods!” he protested.

“Yes, I did.  I knew it in Ellen McCormick’s cabin.”

She rose slowly before him, and he, too, rose to his feet, staring at her like a man who had been struck, while intelligence—­a dawning reason—­an understanding of the strange mystery of her that morning, sent the still greater thrill of its shock through him.  He gave an exclamation of amazement.

“You were at Ellen McCormick’s!  She gave you—­that!”

She nodded.  “Yes, the dress you brought from the ship.  Please don’t scold me, Mr. Holt.  Be a little kind with me when you have heard what I am going to tell you.  I was in the cabin that last day, when you returned from searching for me in the sea.  Mr. McCormick didn’t know.  But she did.  I lied a little, just a little, so that she, being a woman, would promise not to tell you I was there.  You see, I had lost a great deal of my faith, and my courage was about gone, and I was afraid of you.”

“Afraid of me?”

“Yes, afraid of everybody.  I was in the room behind Ellen McCormick when she asked you—­that question; and when you answered as you did, I was like stone.  I was amazed and didn’t believe, for I was certain that after what had happened on the ship you despised me, and only through a peculiar sense of honor were making the search for me.  Not until two days later, when your letters came to Ellen McCormick, and we read them—­”