There was silence, more than a moment of it. Landon's fingers sought and found purchase upon the wood partition. His glance dwelled upon Miller, debatingly. Slowly the flush died from his cheek. And then he laughed again, harshly, unmirthfully, even apologetically, so it seemed, but as if the apology were to himself. He motioned Miller to the door. He laid the basket upon the floor. "Make the most of it," he said. He hesitated. "And don't count on my--my good-humor--again." Without a backward look, he placed the lantern on the table and banged the door. Claire made no comment; her whole desire was to dull all sense of emotion from the situation. She laid her hand upon the basket; she drew out a bottle of wine; she found a tin cup and filled it. She did it all with matter-of-factness; she did not spare a glance towards the floor. And then she knelt beside him, put her arm behind his back, helped him to shuffle into an uneasy leaning posture against the bulkhead. She brought him the cup. He shook his head in protest. "After you," he said determinedly. Her lips moved to speech, and then she stayed herself. After all was not stolid acquiescence best; did not that kill sentiment, and was not sentiment the one thing to be dreaded in this situation? She lifted her shoulders in an indifferent little shrug and then she drank. He watched her quietly. She refilled the cup and held it to his lips. He moved his chin in a queer, cramped little nod of acknowledgment and drank in his turn. And there was a hint of reluctance in the little sigh with which he relinquished the emptied cup. She refilled it and held it for him again, anticipating his protests with the declaration that she herself would have no more, disliked it, wished, rather, for food. And so she watched him drink for the second time, slowly, swallowing tiny mouthfuls, dwelling on it. A queer sense of unreality gripped her as she did so. It was as if she waited on and tolerated the foibles of a child. A hundred times she had done as much or more for her small nephew, but without this protective sense in the doing of it. She realized the fact with a sort of self-inquisition. It pleased her to see this man where her help was essential to him. Some instinct of the same kind had been awake in her as she nursed and watched over him at the silo, but it had died or slept in the intervening weeks of ordinary converse at Gibraltar and on the yacht. It woke again now; and it had grown unwatched. Why, she asked herself. Why? And then came the question of food. The basket contained no accessories, merely the bare essentials. She had to break the bread and divide the cheese with her fingers, bit by bit. And bit by bit she had to place each portion between his teeth. She shrank, or she told herself that it was shrinking, as her hand brushed his moustache, but was there anything truly repellent in this suddenly intimate action? Again self-inquisition denied it. Pleasure was in the sensation, not pain.