Meekly, she obeyed, wondering at her own queer sense of peace under the protection of this man whom she told herself she detested.  The wiry strength of the arm, around which her white fingers closed so confidingly, thrilled her.  Against her will, she all at once lost her sense of repulsion and the wrath she had beers storing against him.  Nor, by her very best efforts, could she revive her righteous displeasure.

“Mr. Brice,” she said, timidly, as he guided her with swiftly steady step through the dense blackness, “perhaps I had no right to speak as I did.  If I did you an injustice—­”

“Don’t!” he bade her, cutting short her halting apology.  “You mustn’t be sorry for anything.  And I’d have bitten out my tongue sooner than tell you the things I had to, if it weren’t that you’d have heard them, soon enough, in an even less palatable form.  Only—­won’t you please try not to feel quite as much toward me as I felt toward those snakes of Hade’s, this afternoon?  You have a right to, of course.  But well, it makes me sorry I ever escaped from there.”

The sincerity, the boyish contrition in his voice, touched her, unaccountably.  And, on impulse, she spoke.

“I asked you to say those things about Milo, to his face,” she began, hesitantly.  “I did that, because I was angry, because I didn’t believe a word of them, and because I wanted to see you punished for slandering my brother.  I—­I still don’t believe a single word of them.  But I believe you told them to me in good faith, and that you were misinformed by the Federal agents who cooked up the absurd story.  And—­and I don’t want to see you punished, Mr. Brice,” she faltered, unconsciously tightening her clasp on his arm.  “Milo is terribly strong.  And his temper is so quick!  He might nearly kill you.  Take me as far as the end of the path, and then go across the lawn to the road, instead of coming in.  Please do!”

“That is sweet of you,” said Gavin, after a moment’s pause, wherein his desire to laugh struggled with a far deeper and more potent emotion.  “But, if it’s just the same to you, I’d rather—­”

“But he is double your size,” she protested, “and he is as strong as Samson.  Why, Roke, over at the Key, is said to be the only man who ever outwrestled him!  And Roke has the strength of a gorilla.”

Gavin Brice smiled grimly to himself in the darkness, as he recalled his own test of prowess with Roke.

“I don’t think he’ll hurt me overmuch,” said he.  “I thank you, just the same.  It makes me very happy to know you aren’t—­”

“Mr. Brice!” she cried, in desperation.  “Unless you promise me not to do as I dared you to—­I shall not let you go a step farther with me.  I—­”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to let me take you the rest of the way, Miss Standish,” he said, a sterner note in his voice quelling her protest and setting her to wondering.  “If you like, we can postpone my talk with Standish about the check-raising.  But—­if you care anything for him, you’d best let me go to him as fast as we can travel.”