"Leave our fire and the stars and the outdoors? Thank you, no. We will sit here together and you won't mind if I doze now and then. See here, Mr. Drain, Allan Drain, when we met in the Adirondacks you did not like me because you thought I was like a boy. I know it is unattractive, but to-night suppose you try to think of me as a boy, as if we were two comrades who had met with an unexpected adventure, for which one was no more to blame than the other, and that we were both determined to make the best of it.
"If you don't mind sitting closer I'll lean against your shoulder a few moments. If I am a nuisance don't hesitate to say so."
In ten minutes Allan Drain discovered that his companion was asleep, this time in reality.
Her red-brown hair having tumbled partly down--Gill had unloosened it, so that it hung crisp and straight to her shoulders--her pallor seemed strangely to have departed with the night's adventure, or else her skin was warmed by the heat from the fire; her lips, irregular in shape, were slightly parted.
An interesting face, Allan Drain concluded, if not a beautiful one, and a nature, generous and faulty, which so far was not fully awakened. Doubtless she would fight valiantly for a friend, but might prove a formidable enemy.
Gill stirred, and without being aware of the fact her companion smiled.
After the night's experience would they be enemies or friends? He hoped and intended they should be friends, as he had announced earlier in the evening.
Few girls, in his estimation, possessed the gift for friendship. And personally there was no possibility of a relation deeper than friendship in his own life for many years; whether as a physician or a writer, he had a long and difficult road to travel before he could expect even a fair amount of wealth.
Now and then during the next few hours Allan dozed. Occasionally he would have to awaken Gill by rising and going forth in search of fresh firewood.
At dawn they both opened their eyes at the same moment.