He opened his eyes without giving any other sign of waking.
"Hallo! What are you looking at me for?"
The tone was not impatient, but she heard in it an implication of fear.
"Papa, are your troubles anything like Jack Berrington's?"
He gazed at her without moving a muscle or changing a shade. She only fancied that in the long look with which he regarded her there was a receding, sinking, dying light, as though the soul within him was withdrawing.
"What makes you ask that?"
The intonation was expressionless, and yet, it seemed to her, a little wary.
"I ask chiefly because—well, because I think they are."
He looked at her for a minute more, perhaps for longer.
"Well, then—you're right."