She paid no heed to his words; she came out into the main cabin, braiding her hair and throwing it over her shoulder, out of the way. “Oh,” she said, “I thought you were asleep. You must come back and go to sleep. You will be sick, truly.”
“I was asleep,” he replied. “I woke up. I can’t sleep.”
“I shouldn’t have left you,” she reproved herself. “But I didn’t think you would wake up. Come, I’ll put you to sleep again, and stay with you.”
“I don’t want to go to sleep.”
She smiled at him. “You don’t know what you want. You’re deadly tired, and sick. Come.”
Her hair was in a thick braid now, down her back. She looked more like a little child than ever; and he had a desire, almost overpowering, to yield, to go back, and sleep at her bidding. He fought it off, repeating stubbornly: “No, I don’t want to sleep.”
There were chairs by the cabin table, and she sat down in one of them and looked up at him and laughed. “What do you want, then? Do you know?”
He sat down, the table between them, and looked at her with his hot and aching eyes. He was dizzy and trembling with weakness. “How old are you?” he asked.
“Past twenty,” she told him. His child, his daughter, would have been that age. “Why?”
“With your hair like that, you look like a little girl,” he said thickly.