"Because I want to. Besides.... It's a good thing to be able to find out
where you are, on a world as big as this.... Don't you think?"
He flung himself into a chair across from her. "Look here, Faith.... Why
do you keep looking at Brander? All the time?"
Faith was startled; she was startled not so much at what Roy said, as at
what his words revealed to her. Nevertheless her voice was steady and
quiet as she asked: "What do you mean, Roy?"
"The way you look at Brander. He's not fit for you to talk to.... To
look at.... Anything. He's not fit to be around you...."
She laughed at him. "How do I look at Mr. Brander, Roy?" she asked.
"Why--like...." Roy groped for words; Faith was suddenly afraid of what
he might say. She interrupted him.
"Don't be silly, Roy. Go away.... Don't bother me.... I'm busy with
this, Roy."
He said: "You...." But she bent over her book; she paid him no attention
for a moment. Roy, sitting opposite, studied the top of her head, and
thought.... There was an expression in his eyes as though he were trying
to remember something familiar that evaded him. In the silence, they
could hear Cap'n Wing snoring in his cabin; they could hear old Tichel
stir in his bunk at the other side of the ship; they could hear the
muffled murmur of the voices of the harpooners, in the steerage. And all
about them the timbers that were the fabric of the _Sally_ creaked and
groaned as they yielded to the tug of the seas. Roy still stared with a
puzzled frown at the top of Faith's brown head.... Faith did not look up
from her book....
Suddenly Roy cried, in a low voice: "Faith! I know...." And, all in a
burst: "You look at Brander just like you used to look at Noll Wing when
we were kids...."
Faith went white; and she rose to her feet so swiftly that the book was
overturned on the table, the loose sheets of paper fluttered, the pen
rolled across to the edge of the table and fell and stuck on its point
in the cabin floor....
With a motion swift as light, forgetting book and paper and pen, Faith
slipped across, into the after cabin. She shut the door in Roy's face,
and he heard her slip the catch upon it.
Roy stared at the closed door; then he went abstractedly around the
table and pulled the pen loose from the floor. The steel point was
twisted, spoiled.