He made no reply; smoked on, still a thought breathless, fixing her with his eyes.
“He brought me some breakfast, just before I fell asleep.... What time is it?”
For what seemed a long space he did not even answer this; merely smoked and stared. She had never, sensitively keen as were her perceptions, felt so curious a hostility in Connor. She had hitherto supposed that she understood him, short as had been their actual acquaintance—-her narrative of a past with him in America, as related to Jim, was false—but the man before her now, sitting all but motionless on the railing, smoking with an odd rapid intensity, holding that cold eye on her, was wholly alien.
Finally he replied: “It's afternoon.”
“No!” She sat up. “Have we been going right along?”
“Right along.”
She stood erect; covered a yawn; then with her thin hands smoothed down the wrinkled blue skirt about her hips.
“I look like the devil,” she remarked. The thin hands went to her hair. “You haven't noticed any sort of a mirror in the cabin, have you, Tex?”
He did not reply.
Faintly through the still air came a faint sound—a boom—boom-bom.