“Dawn,” pronounced the imperturbable voice at the door.  It seemed to her that it was a word that could make any heart sink with apprehension.  Dawn!  She stood appalled.  And the toneless voice outside the door insisted: 

“You must have Tom’s watch there!”

“I haven’t seen it,” she cried as if tormented by a dream.

“Look in that desk thing.  If you push open the shutter you will be able to see.”

Mrs. Travers became aware of the profound darkness of the cabin.  Jorgenson heard her staggering in there.  After a moment a woman’s voice, which struck even him as strange, said in faint tones: 

“I have it.  It’s stopped.”

“It doesn’t matter.  I don’t want to know the time.  There should be a key about.  See it anywhere?”

“Yes, it’s fastened to the watch,” the dazed voice answered from within.  Jorgenson waited before making his request.  “Will you pass it out to me?  There’s precious little time left now!”

The door flew open, which was certainly something Jorgenson had not expected.  He had expected but a hand with the watch protruded through a narrow crack, But he didn’t start back or give any other sign of surprise at seeing Mrs. Travers fully dressed.  Against the faint clearness in the frame of the open shutter she presented to him the dark silhouette of her shoulders surmounted by a sleek head, because her hair was still in the two plaits.  To Jorgenson Mrs. Travers in her un-European dress had always been displeasing, almost monstrous.  Her stature, her gestures, her general carriage struck his eye as absurdly incongruous with a Malay costume, too ample, too free, too bold—­offensive.  To Mrs. Travers, Jorgenson, in the dusk of the passage, had the aspect of a dim white ghost, and he chilled her by his ghost’s aloofness.

He picked up the watch from her outspread palm without a word of thanks, only mumbling in his moustache, “H’m, yes, that’s it.  I haven’t yet forgotten how to count seconds correctly, but it’s better to have a watch.”

She had not the slightest notion what he meant.  And she did not care.  Her mind remained confused and the sense of bodily discomfort oppressed her.  She whispered, shamefacedly, “I believe I’ve slept.”

“I haven’t,” mumbled Jorgenson, growing more and more distinct to her eyes.  The brightness of the short dawn increased rapidly as if the sun were impatient to look upon the Settlement.  “No fear of that,” he added, boastfully.

It occurred to Mrs. Travers that perhaps she had not slept either.  Her state had been more like an imperfect, half-conscious, quivering death.  She shuddered at the recollection.

“What an awful night,” she murmured, drearily.

There was nothing to hope for from Jorgenson.  She expected him to vanish, indifferent, like a phantom of the dead carrying off the appropriately dead watch in his hand for some unearthly purpose.  Jorgenson didn’t move.  His was an insensible, almost a senseless presence!  Nothing could be extorted from it.  But a wave of anguish as confused as all her other sensations swept Mrs. Travers off her feet.