"No; I cannot even try." She looked about her with restless eyes. Something in her face stirred his foreboding.
"Do you mean, Hetty—"
"Oh, I mean nothing," she cried impatiently. "I wish the sea would go down. It's dreadful."
She sprang to her feet, and, moving to the rigging, leaned against the sheer-pole and watched the blue sea rise almost to the line of the deck, then fall away with appalling swiftness. Medbury followed her there.
"What's the matter?" he demanded.
"Why don't you whistle for a wind?" she asked him. "Why don't you? I think I'll go below until you do."
"Isn't it pleasanter here?" he said. "You would call it a beautiful day at home."
"Yes, I should," she acknowledged. "It seems like April—April at home. I can shut my eyes"—she shut them—"and see just how it looks: the big willow by our gate growing green in a night, and the grass, and the sunlight on everything—or rain; only the rain makes the grass greener, and you don't mind it at all in spring, as you do at other times."
He had watched her while she stood with eyes closed, but when she opened them suddenly and looked at him with a smile, he turned away in confusion, as if he had been caught watching her when he knew she would not care to be seen.
"That's the way your face always looks to me," he said, with the boldness of embarrassment.