Then, while she waited tensely, dreading the very
sound of his voice, his attitude suddenly underwent a change. The thin
lips tightened sharply. He turned away.
VII
After he was gone, Stephanie sat up and gazed for a long, long time at
the scud of water leaping past the porthole.
She felt stunned by the events of the past twenty-four hours. She could
only review them with a numbed amazement. The long suspense had ended so
suddenly and so terribly. She could hardly begin to realise that it was
indeed over, that the storm she had foreseen for so long had burst at
last, sweeping away the Governor in headlong overthrow, and leaving her
bruised and battered indeed, but still alive. She had never thought to
survive him. She had not loved him, but her lot had been so inextricably
bound up with his, that she had never seriously contemplated the
possibility of life without him. What would happen to her? she asked
herself. How would it end?
There was no denying the fact that, however inexplicable Pierre's
treatment might be, she was completely and irretrievably his prisoner.
There was no one to deliver her from him; no one to know or care what
became of her. Her importance had crumbled to nothing so far as the
world was concerned. She had simply ceased to count. What did he mean to
do with her? Why had he refused to discuss the future?
Gradually, with a certain reluctance, her thoughts came down to her
recent interview with him, and again the feeling that he had been trying
to convey something that she had failed to grasp possessed her.
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