Farris noted the faint unhappiness still in her face. She looked silently at the great, green ocean of forest that stretched away below this plateau on whose slope they were.
“You don’t like the forest?” he ventured.
“I hate it,” she said. “It smothers one, here.”
Why, he asked, didn’t she leave? The girl shrugged.
“I shall, soon. It is useless to stay. Andre will not go back with me.”
She explained. “He has been here five years too long. When he didn’t return to France, I came out to bring him. But he won’t go. He has ties here now.”
Again, she became abruptly silent. Farris discreetly refrained from asking her what ties she meant. There might be an Annamese woman in the background — though Berreau didn’t look that type.
The day settled down to the job of being stickily tropical, and the hot still hours of the morning wore on. Farris, sprawling in a chair and getting a welcome rest, waited for Berreau to return.
He didn’t return. And as the afternoon waned, Lys looked more and more worried.