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She smiled at him over the teapot.

“You weren’t pleased–at first,” she said. “You were angry. I heard you saying–“

“What?” said Durant.

He looked across at her and laughed naturally, spontaneously, for the first time.

Molly had forgotten to be either embarrassed or dignified.

“I don’t know what it was,” she said; “I only know what it sounded like.”

“And that made you want to speak to me?” said Durant.

The brown face opposite to him looked impish. Yet it seemed to him that there was sadness in her eyes.

“It didn’t frighten me away,” she said.

“It would need to be a very timid person to be frightened at me now,” said Hugh Durant quietly.

She opened her eyes wide, and looked as if she were about to protest. Then, changing her mind, she remained silent.

“Yes,” he said. “Please say it!”

She shook her head without speaking.

But he persisted. Something in her silence aroused his curiosity.

“Am I really formidable, Molly?” he asked.

She rose to take his empty cup, and paused for a moment at his side, looking down at him.

“I don’t think you realise how strong you are,” she said enigmatically.

He laughed rather drearily.

“I am gauging my weakness just at present,” he said.

And then, glancing up, he saw quick pain in her eyes, and abruptly turned the conversation.

Later, when he took his leave, he stood on her step and looked out to the long, grey line of sea with a faint, dissatisfied frown on his face.

“You’re not afraid–living here?” he asked her at the last moment.

“What is there to fear?” said Molly. “I have Caesar, and there are other cottages not far away.”

“Yes, I know,” he said. “But at night–when it’s dark–“

A sudden glory shone in the girl’s pure eyes.

“Oh, no, sir,” she said. “I am not afraid.”

And he departed, hobbling with difficulty up the long, sandy slope.

At the top he paused and looked out over the grey, unquiet sea. The dissatisfaction on his face had given place to perplexity and a faint, dawning wonder that was like the birth of Hope.

* * *

During the long summer days that followed, that strange friendship, begun at the moment when Hugh Durant’s life had touched its lowest point of suffering and misery, ripened into a curiously close intimacy.

The girl was his only visitor–the only friend who penetrated behind the barrier of loneliness that he had erected for himself. He had sought the place sick at heart and utterly weary of life, desiring only to be left alone. And yet, oddly enough, he did not resent the intrusion of this outsider, who had openly told him that she was sorry.

She visited him occasionally at his hermitage, but more frequently she would seek him out in his summer-house and take possession of him there with a winning enchantment that he made no effort to resist. Sometimes she brought him tea there; sometimes she persuaded him to return with her to her cottage on the shore.

The embarrassment had wholly passed from her manner. She was eager and ingenuous as a child. And yet there was something in her–a depth of feeling, a concentration half-revealed–that made him aware of her womanhood. She was never confidential with him, but yet he felt her confidence in every word she uttered.

And the life that had ebbed so low turned in the man’s veins and began to flow with a steady, rising surge of which he was only vaguely conscious.

Molly had become his keenest interest. He had ceased to think with actual pain of the woman who had loved his strength, but had shrunk in horror from his weakness. His bitterness had seemed to disperse with the fragments of her torn letter. It was only a memory to him now–scarcely even that.

“This place has done me a lot of good,” he said to Molly one day. “I have written to my friend Gregory Mountfort to come and see me. He is my doctor.”