"When you were wounded in our service!" she cried. "When you were doing your best for us!"
He shook his head.
"No," he said. "I am working, I shall go on working, for myself. I should like that to be clear."
She half turned away with a little startled motion and the ghost of a frown. Words trembled on her lips and were thrust back. She understood, and would have sought, at any other time, this opportunity to make things clear indeed, but ... the man was wounded ... serving her and hers. No, for the moment the opportunity must go by.
She held up the cord hangings and pointed into the room behind her.
"At any rate you must not stand, and I am extremely culpable to permit your mutiny against your doctor's orders. Why have you got up?"
He strode slowly after her into the shadowed room. He sat down upon the wicker chair which she indicated. His eyes sought hers, keenly and very directly.
"You have no news?" he asked. "Nothing out of Spain, or from the coast?"
Her eyes clouded.
"None, or next to none. The signal station at Spartel saw a lateen working her sweeps in the distance at dawn. There was a glassy calm inshore, but occasional and uncertain breezes out of the shelter of the land. She was making as if for Cadiz, but half an hour later, just as the haze covered her, a strong wind rose from the northwest and it is doubtful if she could have beaten up against it. In which case she probably stood down the coast."