"Why—like...." Roy groped for words; Faith was suddenly afraid of what he might say. She interrupted him.
"Don't be silly, Roy. Go away.... Don't bother me.... I'm busy with this, Roy."
He said: "You...." But she bent over her book; she paid him no attention for a moment. Roy, sitting opposite, studied the top of her head, and thought.... There was an expression in his eyes as though he were trying to remember something familiar that evaded him. In the silence, they could hear Cap'n Wing snoring in his cabin; they could hear old Tichel stir in his bunk at the other side of the ship; they could hear the muffled murmur of the voices of the harpooners, in the steerage. And all about them the timbers that were the fabric of the Sally creaked and groaned as they yielded to the tug of the seas. Roy still stared with a puzzled frown at the top of Faith's brown head.... Faith did not look up from her book....
Suddenly Roy cried, in a low voice: "Faith! I know...." And, all in a burst: "You look at Brander just like you used to look at Noll Wing when we were kids...."
Faith went white; and she rose to her feet so swiftly that the book was overturned on the table, the loose sheets of paper fluttered, the pen rolled across to the edge of the table and fell and stuck on its point in the cabin floor....
With a motion swift as light, forgetting book and paper and pen, Faith slipped across, into the after cabin. She shut the door in Roy's face, and he heard her slip the catch upon it.
Roy stared at the closed door; then he went abstractedly around the table and pulled the pen loose from the floor. The steel point was twisted, spoiled.