She turned to me, with startled eyes.
“The feeling that made me know you were in—in danger.”
“In danger!”
“In danger, Mademoiselle. I felt it so strongly that it sent me to you, and I did not dare leave you alone.”
I had no sooner said it than I realized how profoundly and fatally I had erred. The woman who faced me I had never seen before.
“Monsieur, you do not know me. I am not of a race of cowards. I do not take a coward’s way out of life.”
I looked at her, without power to answer,—amazed and baffled by the swift succession of emotions which had culminated in this erect and scornful pride. My eyes dropped before the look.
“Mademoiselle,” I said, at last. “I have offended you, I have offended you, when my only thought, from the moment I met you, has been to offer you all my friendship and deference. I am profoundly and miserably sorry.”
I left her and went down the deck to the farther rail. There was no resentment towards her,—only a weak, sinking misery that I should have wounded her. My ears were filled with the sound of her gentleness. I remembered only the hurt pride in her eyes. I saw her face in the mists of the twilight, her deep eyes looking gravely out at me.