“He must have been looking at me through his big binoculars. Perhaps, if I had raised my arm—but what did we want with Davidson then, you and I? He won't be back this way for three weeks or more, Lena. I wish I had raised my arm that morning.”
“What would have been the good of it?” she sighed out.
“What good? No good, of course. We had no forebodings. This seemed to be an inexpugnable refuge, where we could live untroubled and learn to know each other.”
“It's perhaps in trouble that people get to know each other,” she suggested.
“Perhaps,” he said indifferently. “At any rate, we would not have gone away from here with him; though I believe he would have come in eagerly enough, and ready for any service he could render. It's that fat man's nature—a delightful fellow. You would not come on the wharf that time I sent the shawl back to Mrs. Schomberg through him. He has never seen you.”
“I didn't know that you wanted anybody ever to see me,” she said.
He had folded his arms on his breast and hung his head.
“And I did not know that you cared to be seen as yet. A misunderstanding evidently. An honourable misunderstanding. But it does not matter now.”
He raised his head after a silence.
“How gloomy this forest has grown! Yet surely the sun cannot have set already.”