But she stood mute. Pale, forbidding, not avoiding my eyes but rather challenging them, and very handsome in her sullenness, she confronted me. At last, as I still waited, and still kept silence, she spoke. “And after I had told you?” she said. “If you had offered help, would it then have been easier to—to stand aside?” “And let me go to my death?” “Yes,” she said. “Good God!” I cried. I could not check the words, I was so deeply shocked. If she had deliberately considered that, she was indeed determined, she was indeed ruthless; and there was nothing more to be done. “I am sorry,” I said. “I had thought, Miss Wilmer, that I might say what was in my mind and then let the thing be as if it had never been. I wished to speak and then—to let there be peace between us. I thought that we might still come to be friends. But if we are so far apart as that, there can be nothing between us, not even forgiveness.” “No,” she answered—but her head sank a little and I fancied that she spoke sadly. “There can be nothing between us. Nothing, sir. We are worlds apart.” Before I could reply Mammy Jacks came to summon her. One of the blacks wanted her, and she broke off and went into the house. She left me adrift on a full tide of wonder. What a woman, I thought! Nay, what a girl, for she was not more than twenty, if she were not still in her teens! If all the women on the Colonial side were like her, I thought, if but a tithe of her spirit and will were in them, the chances of poor old England in the strife which she had provoked were small indeed! I could compare the girl only to the tragic heroines of the Bible, to Judith, or to Jael, who set her hand to the nail and her right hand to the hammer. Very, very nearly had she driven the nail into my temple! And yet she had, she must have a gentler side. She had broken down on that night, when she thought that the deed was done. I could not be mistaken in that; I had seen her fling herself in a passion of remorse on her father’s breast. And then how strong, how deep was the affection which she felt for that father! With what tenderness, with what tears and smiles and caresses had she flown to his arms on his return from the field! She was a provoking, a puzzling, a perplexing creature; and alas, she began to fill far more of my thoughts than was her due. I was idle, and I could not thrust her from them. Because she did not come near me I dwelt on her the more. The chair at the other end of the veranda remained empty all that day and the next, and it was not until noon of the third day that I again had a word with her. Then, as she passed by me with her head high, she saw that something was lacking on the little table on which I took my meals, and she fetched it herself. I wished to bring on a discussion; and as she set the thing down, “Thank you,” I said politely. “But can I be sure that I am safe in eating this?”