The silence, the deathly inactivity of all things, became intolerable.

The girl bravely tried to confine her thoughts to the task of the hour.

She displayed alert watchfulness, an instant readiness to warn her companion of the slightest movement among the trees or by the rocks to the north-west, this being the arc of their periphery assigned to her.
Looking at a sunlit space from cover, and looking at the same place when sweltering in the direct rays of a tropical sun, are kindred operations strangely diverse in achievement.

Iris could not reconcile the physical sensitiveness of the hour with the careless hardihood of the preceding days.

Her eyes ached somewhat, for she had tilted her sou'wester to the back of her head in the effort to cool her throbbing temples.