She shook her head.  He handed it to her unsealed, and she thrust it in her dress.

“I’m ever so much obliged to you,” he said, trying to keep up the reasonable air.  “How pretty your hair looks that way!” he added inconsequentially.  The words were surprised out of him.

She turned abruptly.  It was beginning to be dark in the shack, and he could no longer see into her face.

Her movement was too much for his self-control.  “Ah, must you go?” he cried sharply.  “Another minute or two!  It will be dreadful here after you’ve gone!”

“What’s the use?” she whispered.

“True,” he said harshly.  “What’s the use?” He turned his back on her.  “Good night, and thank you.”

She lingered, hand upon the doorlatch.  “Isn’t there—­isn’t there something else I can do?” she asked.

“No, thank you.”

Still she stayed.  “You haven’t touched your supper,” she said in a small voice.  “Mayn’t I—­send you something from the house?”

“No!” he cried swiftly.  “Not your pity—­nor your charity, neither!”

Colina fumbled weakly with the latch—­and her hand dropped from it.

“Why don’t you go?” he cried sharply.  “I can’t stand it.  I know you hate me.  I tell myself that every minute.  Be honest and show you hate me, not act sorry!”

“I do not hate you,” she whispered.

He faced her with a kind of terror in his eyes.  “For God’s sake, go!” he cried.  “You’re building up a hope in me—­it will kill me if it comes to nothing!  I can’t stand any more.  Go!”

His amazed eyes beheld her come falteringly toward him, reaching out her hands.

“Ambrose—­I—­I can’t!” she whispered.

He caught her in his arms.

Colina broke into a little tempest of weeping, and clung to him like a child.  He held her close, stroking her hair and murmuring clumsy, broken phrases of comfort.

“Don’t!  My dear love, don’t grieve so!  It’s all right now.  I can’t bear to have you hurt.”

“I love you!” she sobbed.  “I have never stopped loving you!  It was something outside of me that persuaded me to hate you.  I’ve been living in a hell since that night!  And to find you like this!  Nothing to eat but bread and salt pork!  Every word you said was like a knife in my breast.  And not a single word of reproach!”

“There!” he said, trying to laugh.  “You didn’t put me here.”

She finally lifted a tear-stained face.  Clinging to his shoulders and searching his eyes, she said:  “Swear to me that you are innocent, and I’ll never have another doubt.”

He shook his head.  “No more swearing!” he said.  “If you let yourself be persuaded by the sound of the words, as soon as you left me and heard the others you’d doubt me again.  It’s got to come from the inside.  Words don’t signify.”

Colina hung her head.  “You’re right,” she said in a humbled voice.  “I guess I just wanted an excuse to save my pride.  I do believe in you—­with my whole heart.  I never really doubted you—­I was ashamed, afraid, I don’t know what.  I was a coward.  But I suffered for it—­every night.  Do you despise me?”