ong till he landed. Don't you
feel that that's quite possible, at least? Or.... did you scream out
for his help, so loudly that he _must_ have heard you, if he'd
been himself?"

"The--the first few minutes in the water were very confusing. I can't
pretend to say exactly what I did or didn't do. I had to think about
saving my life--"

"Of course. But if you'd screamed a number of times in saving your life,
you would be likely to remember it, wouldn't you?"

"Really I can't acknowledge your right to--"

"Miss Heth--_why didn't you scream_?"

His swift cross-examination touched the quick of her spirit; and she
came to her feet, trembling a little, and feeling rather white.

"I will not allow you to catechise me in this way. I will not...."

Dr. Vivian, from the Dabney House, over the Gulf, stood still, quite
silenced....

The thought had struck V. Vivian, and shot him down, that this girl was
lying, deliberately suppressing the truth that meant more than life to
Dal. She hadn't screamed. Dal hadn't known she was upset.... Yet was it
thinkable? In the fiercest denouncing of the yellowest Huns, who had
ever dreamed anything so base of them as this? _Lying?_ With that face
like all the angels, that voice like a heavenly choir?...

The tall doctor saw that his suspicion was unworthy and absurd. His was
no simple choice between his friend's shameful cowardice, and this
girl's criminal falsehood. No, Dal was crazy-drunk at the time, and
himself cried out in his misery that the worst that they said of him was
probably true. And even supposing that this girl was no more than a
fiend in seraphic shape, what conceivable reason could she have for such
infamous suppression? Motive was unimaginable.... No, the fault must be
his own. He had pressed too hard, pried too tactlessly and
inquisitively, not made her understand sufficiently the dire swiftness
of the poor boy's need....

These two stood face to face. Carlisle saw that Jack Dalhousie's friend
was becoming excited; but then, so was she. The man spoke first, in a
low, hurried voice:

"I don't mean to catechise--indeed, I don't. You must try to forgive me
for the liberties I seem to be taking.... The thing's so serious, so
pitiful. This story already flying around back in town--making him a
base coward--he'll never live it down. And it's to-night or never, a--a
misstatement travels so fast and far, and has so long a life--"

"You should have reminded him of all this,