a craving for something, yet she
could not tell what this something was that she wanted and without which
she felt somehow lost. Then she knew--it was a roof.

A person accustomed to live under a roof and suddenly condemned to live
in the open suffers nothing for the first few hours. Then there
gradually comes upon him a weariness and distress almost unimaginable to
those who have not experienced it. He craves not only for a roof but for
walls around him to protect him from the great open spaces that seem
sucking away his individuality. A man living absolutely in the open
without tent or cave or house wherein to concentrate himself would
surely and without doubt either become mad or descend to the level of
the beasts.

She came up the beach to the cave where she had slept, went into it, and
sat down, her mind finding instant relief from the craving that had
filled it. Her hands went up to her hair and began to arrange it as best
they could. Had she been alone on the beach she would have taken the
pins out and left it loose for the winds to comb and blow about, but the
thought of the men prevented her. She did not like the idea of their
seeing her going about with her hair down; after her experiences in the
boat it seemed absurd to quibble over a thing like this and she tried to
argue with herself without avail. It seemed to her that if she went
about in _neglige_ like that she would lower herself. How? There was
nothing unwomanly in flowing hair, there was nothing indelicate. No, but
women of her class never appeared before men in that fashion, she would
lower herself socially.

A fool would have laughed at her, holding that amidst castaways there
was no such thing as social position, and, though fools are not
inevitably wrong in their opinions, he would have been wrong.

Though Bompard and La Touche had dropped the "mademoiselle" in
addressing her, they treated her since landing with a certain respect
which would have been wanting had she been a woman of their own class.

The class difference held and was a greater protection to her than
anything else. In their eyes she was not a woman, but a lady, a fact
that chilled familiarity, or worse, and, with the aid of her superior
intelligence, gave her authority.

She felt this instinctively and determined that at no time and in no
manner would she allow her position to degrade.

Then, having done what she could to her hair she took the rings from the
tobacco box and