She felt during the silence that followed as though he were pleading
with her, urging her, even entreating her. Yet still she resisted,
standing near him indeed, but with a desperate reluctance at her
heart, a shrinking unutterable from the bare thought of any closer
proximity to him that was as the instinctive recoil of purity from a
thing unclean.

The horror of his deed had returned upon her over-whelmingly with his
brief reference to it. His lack of emotion seemed to her as hideous
callousness, more horrible than the deed itself. His physical
exhaustion had called her out of herself, but the reaction was doubly
terrible.

Nick said no more. He lay quite motionless, hardly seeming to breathe,
and she realised that there was no repose in his attitude. He was not
even trying to rest.

She wrung her hands together. It could not go on, this tension. Either
she must yield to his unspoken desire, or he would sit up and cry
off the bargain. And she knew that sleep was a necessity to him.
Common-sense told her that he was totally unfit for further hardship
without it.

She closed her eyes a moment, summoning all her strength for the
greatest sacrifice she had ever made. And then in silence she sat down
beside him, within reach of his hand.

He uttered a great sigh and suffered his whole body to relax. And she
knew by the action, though he did not speak a word, that she had set
his mind at rest.