Deliberately she had lured him into the ambush which would have proved fatal for him had it not been for Jean Croisset.

And she was not a mute! He had heard her voice; when that death-grip was tightest about his throat there had come to him that terrified cry: "_Mon Dieu_, you are killing him--killing him!" His breath came a little faster as he whispered the words to himself.
They appealed to him now with a significance which he had not understood at first.

He was sure that in that cry there had been real terror; almost, he fancied, as he lay with his eyes shut tight, that he could still hear the shrill note of despair in the voice.

The more he tried to reason the situation, the more inexplicable grew the mystery of it all.
If the girl had calmly led him into the ambush, why, in the last moment, when success seemed about to crown her duplicity, had she cried out in that agony of terror?
In Howland's heated brain there came suddenly a vision of her as she stood beside him in the white trail; he felt again the thrill of her hands, the touch of her breast for a moment against his own; saw the gentle look that had come into her deep, pure eyes; the pathetic tremor of the lips which seemed bravely striving to speak to him.

Was it possible that face and eyes like those could have led him into a deathtrap! Despite the evidence of what had happened he found himself filled with doubt.