He set down his pail, dropped his oars, and, wiping his hands across his mouth, sized me up with unmixed disapproval in which there was no particle of respect.
I tried to twist my damp hair out of my face, but the pins had fallen from it and were lost, and my dress, drenched with sea salt, clung to me like the shriveled skin of a dead fish. I staggered to my feet, not knowing how to explain myself.
But by this time the fisherman had his own line of attack well in hand.
“Where’s your partner?” he asked rudely.
“My—?”
“You don’t sleep down here on the beach alone, do you?”
The hot blood rushed to my colorless face, and for the first time that dreadful foggy morning I felt warm. Who or what did the creature think I was?
“You do not understand!”
He was pushing the dory across the beach with great sweeping pulls along one side. “Oh,” he grunted, between jerks, “I—think—I—do!”
The evil imagination of these people was too much for me to cope with. I could neither forestall nor refute it. I stood wretchedly watching him, without trying to say a word in my defense.