"Listen to me--Miss Standish--"
She was gone, so suddenly that his movement to intercept her was futile,
and she passed through the door before he could reach her. Again he
called her name, but her footsteps were almost running up the
passageway. He dropped back, his blood cold, his hands clenched in the
darkness, and his face as white as the girl's had been. Her words had
held him stunned and mute. He saw himself stripped naked, as she
believed him to be, and the thing gripped him with a sort of horror. And
she was wrong. He had followed what he believed to be good judgment and
common sense. If, in doing that, he had been an accursed fool--
Determinedly he started for her cabin, his mind set upon correcting her
malformed judgment of him. There was no light coming under her door.
When he knocked, there was no answer from within. He waited, and tried
again, listening for a sound of movement. And each moment he waited he
was readjusting himself. He was half glad, in the end, that the door
did not open. He believed Miss Standish was inside, and she would
undoubtedly accept the reason for his coming without an apology
in words.
He went to his cabin, and his mind became increasingly persistent in its
disapproval of the wrong viewpoint she had taken of him. He was not
comfortable, no matter how he looked at the thing.
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