She smiled at him with kind brown eyes, eyes which expressed liking in fuller measure than their displeasure of a moment before. She regretted her outburst. What did it concern her what he thought, what any one thought of a man who was almost a stranger to her, whom a few days ago she did not know.
“I slept badly last night,” she added, as if to account for her ill-humour.
“How was that?” he asked, more with a view to turning the talk than from curiosity.
His question recalled the ugly memories of the night very vividly to her. She heard again in imagination the stumbling footsteps going along the stoep. Her face clouded.
“What does keep one wakeful at times?” she inquired. “The mind works, I suppose. I think perhaps I was tired.”
“I took you too far,” he said contritely. “It was inconsiderate of me. But you seemed so interested.”
“I was. I wouldn’t have missed a bit of it. It was worth a sleepless night.”
“I doubt whether I should consider anything worth the sacrifice of a night’s sleep,” he said, and laughed. “It would take a lot to spoil my rest. The air here acts like a narcotic with me.”
“That’s odd,” she said. “It makes me alert. There’s something in the atmosphere of this place—I don’t know what it is—which influences me strangely. I go about in a state of expectant curiosity. I’m looking for things to happen. That’s absurd, I know; but the feeling’s there.”
He scrutinised her intently. In this lonely spot what could happen out of the ordinary run of events? Nothing surely in the nature of change—unless the change were in one’s self.