"Then what are you crying for?"
The words sounded more like a rude retort than a question.
She found them unanswerable, and suddenly, while she still stood
battling with her tears, something in the utterance touched her sense of
humour. She gulped down a sob, and gave a little strangled laugh.
"I don't quite know," she said, drying her eyes. "Thank you for picking
me up."
"I should have tumbled over you if I hadn't," he responded.
Again her sense of humour quivered, finally dispelling all desire to
cry. She turned a little.
"I'm glad you didn't!" she said with fervour.
"So am I."
The curt rejoinder cut clean through her depression. She broke into a
gay, spontaneous laugh.
But the next instant she checked herself and apologized.
"Forgive me! I'm very rude."
"What's the joke?" he asked.
She answered him in a voice that still quivered a little with suppressed
merriment.
"There isn't a joke. I--I often laugh at nothing. It's a silly habit of
mine."
His moody silence seemed to endorse this remark. She became silent also,
and after a moment made a shy movement to depart.
He turned then and looked at her, looked full and straight into her
small, sallow face, with its shadowy eyes and pointed features, as if he
would register her likeness upon his memory.
She gave him a faint, friendly smile.
"I'm going below now," she said. "Good-bye!"
He raised his hat abruptly. His head was massive as a bull's.
"Mind how you go!" he said briefly.
And Sybil went, feeling like a child that has been rebuked.