A strip of white beach persisted in his mind, and waiting for him on this beach was the slim body of the girl, her pale face turned up to the morning sun, her long hair streaming over the sand.

It was a vision that choked him, and he struggled to keep away from it.

If he found her like that, he knew, at last, what he would do.
It was the final crumbling away of something inside him, the breaking down of that other Alan Holt whose negative laws and self-imposed blindness had sent Mary Standish to her death.
Truth seemed to mock at him, flaying him for that invulnerable poise in which he had taken such an egotistical pride.

For she had come to _him_ in her hour of trouble, and there were five hundred others aboard the _Nome_.

She had believed in him, had given him her friendship and her confidence, and at the last had placed her life in his hands.