"The moon's better than all the lamps," said Martin, and put it out. He sat on his bunk and the gleam of his cigarette came and went. It was like a big firefly in the half dark cabin. "To-morrow," he said to himself, with a tingle running through his blood, "to-morrow—and Joan."
Tootles waited for him to speak. She might as well have been miles away for all that she affected him. He seemed to have forgotten that she was alive.
He had. And there was a long silence.
"To-morrow,—and Joan. That's it. I'll go over to Easthampton and take her away from that house and talk to her. This time I'll break everything down and tell her what she means to me. I've never told her that."
"He doesn't care," thought Tootles. "I'm no more than an old shoe to him."
"If I'd told her it might have made a difference. Even if she had laughed at me she would have had something to catch hold of if she wanted it. By Jove, I wish I'd had the pluck to tell her."
"He even looks at me and doesn't see me," she went on thinking, her hopes withering like cut flowers, her eagerness petering out and a great humiliation creeping over her. "What's the matter with me? Some people think I'm pretty. Irene does ... and last night, when I kissed him there was an answer.... Has that girl come between us again?"
And so they went on, these two, divided by a thousand miles, each absorbed in individual thought, and there was a long queer silence.
But she was there to fight, and having learned one side of men during her sordid pilgrimage and having an ally in Nature, she got up and sat down on the bunk at his side, snuggling close.
"You are cold, Tootles," he said, and put his arm round her.