“I don’t know whether you will understand,” she began, half to herself. “But—I believe in God. Just as all men do! Just as all men must, in their hearts, believe. I believe there is a God; I believe He is a very real God, caring for us. I believe He is caring for me. So I can never be afraid.
“And—there is another thing,” she said. “I told you there is good in you, even though men do call you Black Pawl. I am not afraid of you, because of that good in you. I—understand you, perhaps, better than you understand yourself. You are tired out, with your fighting the storm. You are unhappy for Red Pawl’s sake. You are sick with—the liquor you have been drinking. It is almost true of you that you know not what you do.
“But you do know; and there is too much good in you to lie silent through the doing. It would never let you do that which you try to wish to do, Cap’n Pawl.” She smiled suddenly, looking confidently up at him. “As a matter of fact,” she said, “if you could have driven yourself on—But you can never do it, Cap’n Pawl. You could not. So, I am not afraid.”
He had listened to her, frowning with the effort at thought; and when she ceased speaking, he remained silent, as though considering. His head was splitting with a throbbing ache; his eyes were coals. He could not think. Of all that she had said, he only understood that she was not afraid. It was like a challenge flung in his teeth. He said thickly:
“Not afraid? By the eternal, we’ll try that!”
His right hand dropped on her shoulder, and he made to jerk her toward him, against his breast, but she came passively, unresisting. He caught her head in the crook of his arm and gazed down into her eyes. And then suddenly he felt a sickening shame as though he were beating a child. And she had not resisted! Why did she not resist, fight him, give him obstacles to overcome?
She remained passive; but it was hard for her to breathe. When her lungs were choking, she was forced to set her hands against his breast and push herself away from him.
He cried out at that. So! She was fighting at last. He let her go, for the exultant triumph of recapturing her. When she was free of him, he reached out and caught her shoulder again.
Under his harsh hand, the light fabric of her waist was torn. A wave of sickness at what he had done swept over him, and he dropped his hand.
And then he saw, hanging by a thin gold chain about her neck, a locket of gold. It was such a locket as he had given to his wife, long years ago.