Through the open port a grey sky glimmered. She rose to her knees and gazed out upon a grey waste of water heaving to the horizon.
Then she turned and looked across at the bed where Guild lay, his blond head cradled on one arm, asleep.
Her eyes rested on him a long while. Then she caught sight of her shoes and spats on the floor—looked down at the blankets and covers that had kept her warm. The next moment her eyes fell on her satchel where it stood open, the key still in the lock, and her silver toilet articles glimmering dully inside.
The vague tenderness in her blue eyes vanished; he had done this, too!—shamefully, by force, treading mercilessly on the frail bud of friendship—ignoring everything, sacrificing everything to a dull, obstinate determination which he had characterized as duty.
She turned and looked at the man who had done all this, her eyes darkly beautiful, her lips stern.
Duty? He had not considered the duty she owed. He had not respected her promise to bring back what had been intrusted to her. And when the discussion had tired him—when her warnings, pleadings—even her appeals in the name of the first friendship she had ever given—had been ignored, he had coolly used violence.
Yes, violence, although, perhaps, the violence had not been very violent. But it was force—and hateful to her who never before had been obliged to endure the arrogance which her caste only knew how to dispense.
"So brauch' Ich Gewalt!" kept ringing in her ears like a very obsession as she knelt there, sitting back on her own supple limbs, and watching the sleeping man out of beautiful hostile eyes.
That man! That American—or Belgian—whatever he was—with his clear grey eyes and his short yellow hair and that mouth of his which could be faintly humorous at times and, at times be so ugly and set—what was there about him that she liked—or rather had liked?
Not his features; they were only passable from an ornamental point of view—not his lean but powerful figure, which resembled many other figures she had seen in England—not his manner particularly—at least she had seen more deferential attitudes, more polish of the courtly and continental sort, more empressement.