--"No," said Donkin, impulsively, and
instead of going out leaned his back against the closed door. He looked
at James Wait, and saw him long, lean, dried up, as though all his flesh
had shrivelled on his bones in the heat of a white furnace; the meagre
fingers of one hand moved lightly upon the edge of the bunk playing an
endless tune. To look at him was irritating and fatiguing; he could last
like this for days; he was outrageous--belonging wholly neither to death
nor life, and perfectly invulnerable in his apparent ignorance of both.
Donkin felt tempted to enlighten him.--"What are yer thinkin' of?" he
asked, surlily. James Wait had a grimacing smile that passed over the
deathlike impassiveness of his bony face, incredible and frightful as
would, in a dream, have been the sudden smile of a corpse.
"There is a girl," whispered Wait.... "Canton Street girl.------She
chucked a third engineer of a Rennie boat------for me. Cooks
oysters just as I like... She says------she would chuck------any
toff------louder."
Donkin could hardly believe his ears. He was scandalised--"Would she?
Yer wouldn't be any good to 'er," he said with unrestrained disgust.
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