“Tell her,” he said with stiff and bitter lips, “that I couldn’t rest for thinking of her alone there, and I sent back to ask if she was all right.”
Moale, in his impassive way, set off without expressing any opinion as to the usefulness of this errand.
He was back by the time the sun had completed a quarter of its journey across the sky. Gault was sitting hunched up in the grass almost precisely as he had left him. In twenty-four hours the trader had not slept. He sprang up at the sight of Moale.
“Well?” he demanded with cruel eagerness.
“I found the two girls in the Women’s House . . .” Moale began.
“Alone?” snarled Gault.
“Alone. Everything looked as usual. When I delivered your message, Loseis listened politely, but her eyes were full of hard laughter. She did not believe me.”
“What did she say?”
“She told me to thank you, and to tell you that there was nothing she required.”
“What then?”