He whistled carelessly, rolling a cigarette. After he lighted it he said: "Ready to talk yet, partner?" She maintained an obstinate silence, but that sharp eye saw that she was trembling. He set his teeth and then drew several long puffs on his cigarette. "I'm going to count to ten, pal, and when I finish you're going to tell me everything straight. In the meantime don't stay there thinking up a new lie. I know you too well, and if you try the same thing on me again--" "Well?" she snarled, all the tiger coming back in her voice. "You'll talk, all right. Here goes the count: One--two--three--four--" As he counted, leaving a long drag of two or three seconds between numbers, there was not a change in the figure of the girl. She still lay with her back turned on him, and the only expressive part that showed was her hand. First it lay limp against her hip, but as the monotonous count proceeded it gathered to a fist. "Five--six--seven--" It seemed that he had been counting for hours, his will against her will, the man in him against the woman in her, and during the pauses between the sound of his voice the very air grew charged with waiting. To the girl the wait for every count was like the wait of the doomed traitor when he stands facing the firing-squad, watching the glimmer of light go down the aimed rifles. For she knew the face of the man who sat there counting; she knew how the firelight flared in the dark red of his hair and made it seem like another fire beneath which the blue of the eyes was strangely cold. Her hand had gathered to a hard-balled fist. "Eight--nine--" She sprang up, screaming: "No, no, Pierre!" And threw out her arms to him. "Ten." She whispered: "It was the girl with yellow hair--Mary Brown." CHAPTER 33 It was as if she had said: "Good morning!" in the calmest of voices. There was no answer in him, neither word nor expression, and out of ten sharp-eyed men, nine would have passed him by without noting the difference; but the girl knew him as the monk knows his prayers or the Arab his horse, and a solemn, deep despair came over her. She felt like the drowning, when the water closes over their heads for the last time. He puffed twice again at the cigarette and then flicked the butt into the fire. When he spoke it was only to say: "Did she stay long?" But his eyes avoided her. She moved a little so as to read his face, but when he turned again and answered her stare she winced. "Not very long, Pierre." "Ah," he said. "I see! It was because she didn't dream that this was the place I lived in."