"She was in love with you!" Colina's voice rang bitterly.
"Are you beginning to doubt me already?" he cried, aghast. "Be reasonable! You know how it is with these native girls. The sight of a white man hypnotizes them. You can't have lived here without seeing it. Do you blame me for that?"
She paid no attention to the question. Struggling to command herself, she said: "Answer me one question. It is my right. Did you ever kiss her?"
Ambrose groaned in spirit, and cast round in his mind how to answer.
"You hesitate!" cried Colina, suddenly beside herself. "You did! Ah, horrible!" She violently scrubbed her own lips with the back of her hand. "A brown girl! A teepee-dweller! A savage! Ugh! That's what men are!"
An honest anger nerved Ambrose. He roughly seized her wrists. "Listen!" he commanded in a tone that silenced her. "As I bade her good-by on the shore she asked me to. She had just risked death to get me out, remember—worse than death perhaps. What should I have done? Answer me that!"
Colina refused to meet the question. Her assumption of indifference was very painful to see. She was not beautiful then. "Don't ask me," she said with a sneer. "I suppose men understand such women. I cannot."
Ambrose turned away with a helpless gesture. Colina moved haughtily toward the door. Within ten minutes their wonderful happiness had been born and strangled again.
"I don't suppose you will want to send my letter now," Ambrose said with a sinking heart.
Colina blushed with shame, but she would not let him see it. "Certainly," she said coldly. "What has this to do with a question of justice?"