After a long pause, during which neither stirred, she told him, in a faint voice: "Thank you."
"Oh, I forgive you, Mr. Whitaker. My heart is really not quite so fragile as all this implies."
"I didn't mean that--you know I didn't. I'm only trying to assure you that I won't bother you--with this trouble of mine--again. I don't want you to be afraid of me."
The words were terse and brusque enough; the accompanying swift gesture, in which her hand rested momentarily on his arm as if in confidence approaching affection, he found oddly contradictory.
"You don't see--anything?" she said with an abrupt change of manner, swinging to the north.
He shaded his eyes, peering intently through the night, closely sweeping its encompassing obscurity from northwest to southeast.
"Nothing," he said, dropping his hand. "If there were a boat heading this way, we couldn't help seeing her lights."
"I'm afraid not. They'd hardly come to-night, anyway; more likely by daylight, if they should happen to grow suspicious of our beacon."
"Then I think I'll go to bed. I'm very, very tired, in spite of my sleep on the sands. That didn't rest me, really."
"Is it necessary, do you think? Or even worth while?"
"I wish," she continued--"I wish you'd stay in the house. I--I'm really a bit timid: unnerved, I presume. It's been, you know, rather a harrowing experience. Anything might happen in a place like this...."
"Oh, certainly," he agreed, something constrained. "I'd feel more content, myself, to know I was within call if anything should alarm you."
In silence, while Whitaker fidgeted about the room, awkward and unhappy, the girl removed a glass lamp from the shelf above the sink, assured herself that it was filled, and lighted it. Then, over her shoulder:
"I hope you don't mean to stay up all night."
"Oh, but you are," she contradicted calmly.
"Honestly; I slept so long down there on the beach--"
"Please don't try to deceive me. I know that slumbers like those--of exhaustion--don't rest one as they should. Besides, you show how tired you are in every gesture, in the way you carry yourself, in your very eyes."
"You're mistaken," he contended, looking away for fear lest his eyes were indeed betraying him. "Besides, I mean merely to sit up here, to see that everything is all right."