What was it she liked,—had once liked in this man? Nothing! Nothing!—the tears suddenly glimmered in her eyes and she winked them dry, angrily.
And to think—to remember in years to come that she—she had pleaded with that man in the name of friendship—and of something more than friendship!—The hot colour mantled face and throat and she covered her eyes in a sudden agony of mortification.
For a few moments she remained so, then her hands fell, helplessly again.
And, as she knelt there looking at him through the increasing daylight, suddenly her eyes narrowed, and her set face grew still and intent.
Crowding out of the shallow breast pocket of his Norfolk where he lay were papers. Her papers!
The next instant, lithely, softly, soundlessly on her unshod feet, she had slipped from the lounge and crossed the stateroom to his side, and her fingers already touched the edges of the packet.
Her papers! And her hand rested on them. But she did not take them. There was something about the stealth of the act that checked her,—something that seemed foreign, repugnant to her nature.
Breathless, her narrow hand poised, she hesitated, trying to remember that the papers were hers—striving to aid herself with the hot and shameful memory of the violence he had offered her.
Why couldn't she take them? This man and she were now at war! War has two phases, violence and strategy. Both are legitimate; he had played his part, and this part was strategy. Why shouldn't she play that part? Why?
But her hand wavered, fell away, and she looked down into his sleeping face and knew that she could not do it.