"But I'm not distressed. It isn't altogether pleasant, but it can't be helped and might easily have been worse."
"And still I can't help feeling, somehow, the wretched injustice of it to you. I want to protest—to do something to mend matters."
"But since you can't"—she laughed in light mockery, innocent of malice—"since we're doing our best, let's be philosophical and sit down over there and watch to see if there's any answer to our signal."
"There won't be."
"You are a difficult body. Never mind. Come along!" she insisted with pretty imperiousness.
They seated themselves with their backs to the fire and at a respectful distance from it, where they could watch the jetting blades of light that ringed the far-off headland. Whitaker reclined on an elbow, relapsing into moody contemplation. The girl drew up her knees, clasped her arms about them, and stared thoughtfully into the night.
Behind them the fire flamed and roared, volcanic. All round it in a radius of many yards the earth glowed red, while, to one side, the grim, homely façade of the farm-house edged blushing out of the ambient night, all its staring windows bloodshot and sinister.
The girl stirred uneasily, turning her head to look at Whitaker.
"You know," she said with a confused attempt to laugh: "this is really no canny, this place. Or else I'm balmy. I'm seeing things—shapes that stir against the blackness, off there beyond the light, moving, halting, staring, hating us for butchering their age-old peace and quiet. Maybe I'll forget to see them, if you'll talk to me a little."
"I can't talk to you," he said, ungracious in his distress.