To Norrie Ford, peeping furtively from behind one of the domes of clipped
foliage, there was exasperation in the fact that his new position gave him
no glimpse of the people in the room. His hunger to see them became for
the minute more insistent than that for food. They represented that human
society from which he had waked one morning to find himself cut off, as a
rock is cut off by seismic convulsion from the mainland of which it has
formed a part. It was in a sort of effort to span the gulf separating him
from his own past that he peered now into this room, whose inmates were
only passing the hours between the evening meal and bedtime. That people
could sit tranquilly reading books or playing games filled him with a kind
of wonder.
When he considered it safe he slipped along to what he hoped would prove a
better point of view, but, finding it no more advantageous, he darted to
still another. The light lured him as it might lure an insect of the
night, till presently he stood on the very steps of the terrace. He knew
the danger of his situation, but he could not bring himself to turn and
steal away till he had fixed the picture of that cheerful interior firmly
on his memory.
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