“And you came to take care of me? That was very sweet of you.”
“If I had gone back to wake up Tarleton, you might have got to Heaven knows where by the time he was under way,” went on Raynier, conscious that her tone and manner had become insidiously alluring. Was he going to drift into the common idiocy? he thought, with something of dismay. “You might have altered your course and got right away from us. Then, when I did come up with you I didn’t like to wake you, because I thought it might give you a shock of sorts.”
“But I was not asleep—at least, I don’t think I was.”
Raynier stared.
“Not asleep? But you won’t mind my saying that that is—er—rather an unusual kind of walking attire.”
She laughed, glancing at her wrapper.
“Isn’t it? The fact is I hadn’t gone to bed yet I was sitting reading in the tent, and some impulse moved me to come to this place again—I can’t explain it, but it was there. Yet, I must have been asleep at times, when I walked. But I was half conscious, too, that you were near to me.”
“Well, you did not seem surprised when you woke up, so to say, and found I was.”
“No. And in a way it was a waking-up. I can’t explain it—unless it was a kind of sleeping consciousness.”
“What a strange girl you are, Miss Clive. Somehow I can’t make you out at all.”