The girl inclined her head and listened, then pointed upward. A wan, tired smile, that threw tiny wrinkles in the corners of her mouth, held Stirling's eyes. She seemed suddenly older to him, and he wondered at this change as he waited for her to speak.
"They are above," she said at last. "Do you think they are plotting to capture you?" Her voice had changed, and Stirling detected a note of concern. He looked up and caught her glance full upon his own. She bit her lip and flushed.
He tried to stammer an answer, but none came that fitted the question. A gulf had suddenly opened between them, and her eyes no longer held the shimmer they had once contained. She had stared at him as if he had been a ghost or spectre from another world, her manner suddenly grown cold.
"What did I do?" he exclaimed. "Why do you look at me that way?"
"Because—why, because I thought you were an old man. You're not!"
Stirling straightened, and he felt his heart throbbing. "I'm forty-six," he said. "That's old, isn't it?"
The girl's face dimpled; the lines vanished from her lips and left her openly frank and childish looking. "Forty-six?"
"Going on forty-seven."
"That isn't old. You look so different with a shave and a—wash. I'm going to make you promise one thing."
Stirling was ready to promise any number of things. "What is it?" he asked.