Down the hall was the sound of wrenching planks, and those who ventured curiously beheld Dangerfield, assisted by Sassafras, busy at the task of unpacking, while Inga, from her point of vantage, surveyed the operations.
Since New Year’s, Dangerfield had made no attempt to mingle with the others, though several times he had stopped for a word of greeting, as though in self-excuse; but he never passed the threshold, and, after a moment’s fidgeting and a few gracious words, he departed.
“Sometimes I think he’d like to chum in, but is afraid to,” said Flick, who was puzzled by this lack of sociability—not being affected in the same way.
“Let him alone; he’ll come around in his way,” said O’Leary, “if there’s anything left of him.”
At this period, though he would not have admitted it, he felt a growing antagonism, and the cause was Inga. The girl had a drawing force of which he was always aware. It was not that he felt sentimentally moved, for there was an ingrained common sense about him that warned him of the folly of such a hope. She perplexed him; she held him; she aroused a certain sense of combat in him, like a spirited horse. It was not that he would ever be in love with her, but that, rating her high in his experience, it rankled in his vanity, not that she was indifferent to him but that she should have gone so directly to another, who had not even sought her. Yet he had gone twice in the fortnight at her call to help her through stormy nights with the derelict.
Inga, alone of the floor, knew the full extent of the turbulent voyage through which Dangerfield was passing. Since the night on which she had committed the error of attempting to restrain him, she had refrained from putting any brake upon his actions, holding herself in readiness to come to him in the limp hours of succeeding weakness and despair. This attitude awakened his curiosity, as it gained his confidence. Once he even asked to see her room. She refused.
“Why not?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully, “but I had rather you wouldn’t.”
“It’s not—” Then he stopped. It could not have been on account of prudery. “No; it’s not that you care what the others say.”
“No; it’s not that,” she said, amused at the thought.