"So," he said aloud, "she called me a coward--and I am--I was--I can't bear it.

What would my uncle say ?" His eyes filled.

He brushed away the tears with his sleeve.

A sudden remembrance of how good she had been to him, how loyally silent, added to his distress.

He longed for a chance to prove that he was not that--that--Eager and yet distrustful, he got up and walked through the melting snow to the cabin, where he lay on the floor thinking, a prey to that fiend imagination, of which he had a larger share than is always pleasant when excuses are needed.
Leila was coldly civil and held her tongue, but for a few days would not go into the woods with him and rode alone or with her uncle.