you nearly jumped out of your skin.

Touching my shoulder, her hand fiercely imperative in the dark, was a
girl--at La Chance, where no girl had ever set foot!--and she was
speaking to me with just that golden, carrying voice I knew would belong
to my own dream girl, if she were keeping it down to a whisper.

"So you're here," was what she said; and it would have fitted in with
the fool's thoughts I had just come out of, if it had not been for her
tone. That startled me, till all I could do was to nod in the dark I
could just see her in. I could not discern what she looked like, for her
head was muffled in a shawl; and I never realized that all she could see
of me was my height and general make-up, since my face must have been
invisible where I stood in the shadow.

"You!" her golden voice stabbed like a dagger. "I won't have you staying
here--where I am! I told you I'd speak to you when I could, and I'm
speaking. You kept your word and disgraced me once, if I don't know how
you did it; but I won't run the chance of _that_ again! I'm safe here,
except for you; and you've got to let me alone. If you don't, I--I----"
she stammered till I knew she was shaking, but she got hold of herself
in the second. "You won't find it safe to play any tricks with the gold
here--or me--if that's what you came for," she said superbly, "and
you've given me a way to stop it. _That's_ why I've sneaked out to meet
you: not because I care for you. You must go away, or--I'll tell that
you're here! Do you hear? I don't care what promises you make me--they
always came easily to you. If you want me to hold my tongue about you,
you've got to go. Go and betray me, if you like--but _go_!"

There was dead, cold hatred in it, the kind a woman has for a man she
once cared for, and it staggered what wits I had left. I nodded like a
fool, just as if I had known what she was talking about, and went on
lifting the canoe ashore. Whether I really heard her give a terrified
gasp I don't know; perhaps I only thought so. But as I put the canoe on
the bank I heard a rustle, and when I looked up she was gone. There was
nothing to tell me she had really even been there. It was just as
probable that I was crazy, or walking in my sleep, as that a girl who
talked like that--or even any kind of a girl--should be at La Chance.
The cold, collected hatred in her voice still jarred me, since it was no
way for even a dream girl to speak. But what jarred me worse was that