“God!” he said at the last.  “And she told you I had gone from the country!  The devil!  I can’t help saying it, Sheila—­she tortured you.  She deserved what God sent her.”

“Oh, no!”—­Sheila rocked to and fro—­“no one could deserve such dreadful terror and pain.  She—­she wasn’t sane.  I was—­foolish to trust her ...  I am so foolish—­I think I must be too young or too stupid for—­for all this.  I thought the world would be a much safer place.”  She looked up again, and speech had given her tormented nerves relief, for her eyes were much more like her own, clear and young again.  “Mr. Hilliard—­what shall I do with my life, I wonder?  I’ve lost my faith and trustingness.  I’m horribly afraid.”

He stood before her and spoke in a gentle and reasonable tone.  “I’ll tell you the answer to that, ma’am,” he said.  “I’ve thought that all out while I’ve been taking care of you.”

She waited anxiously with parted lips.

“Well, ma’am, you see—­it’s like this.  I’m plumb ashamed of myself through and through for the way I have acted toward you.  I was a fool to listen to that dern lunatic.  She told me—­lies about you.”

“Miss Blake did?”

“Yes, ma’am.”  His face crimsoned under her look.

Sheila closed her eyes and frowned.  A faint pink stole up into her face.  She lifted her lids again and he saw the brightness of anger.  “And, of course, you took her lies for the truth?”

“Oh, damn!  Now you’re mad with me and you won’t listen to my plan!”

He was so childish in this outbreak that Sheila was moved to dim amusement.  “I’m too beaten to be angry at anything,” she said.  “Just tell me your plan.”

“No,” he said sullenly.  “I’ll wait.  I’m scared to tell you now!”

She did not urge him, and it was not till the next morning that he spoke about his plan.  She had got out to her chair again and had made a pretense of eating an ill-cooked mess of canned stuff which he had brought to her on a tray.  It was after he had taken this breakfast away that he broke out as though his excitement had forced a lock.

“I’m going down to Rusty to-day,” he said.  His eyes were shining.  He looked at her boldly enough now.

“And take me?” Sheila half-started up.  “And take me?”

“No, ma’am.  You’re to stay here safe and snug.”  She dropped back.  “I’ll leave everything handy for you.  There’s enough food here for an army and enough fuel....  You’re as safe here as though you were at the foot of God’s throne.  Don’t look like that, girl.  I can’t take you.  You’re not strong enough to make the journey in this cold, even on a sled.  And we can’t”—­his voice sunk and his eyes fell—­“we can’t go on like this, I reckon.”

“N-no.”  Sheila’s forehead was puckered.  Her fingers trembled on the arms of her chair.  “N-no....”  Then, with a sort of quaver, she added, “Oh, why can’t we go on like this?—­till the snow goes and I can travel with you!”