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 sh.o.r.e.
The embarra.s.sment had wholly pa.s.sed 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."
She looked up at him quickly. She was sitting on her doorstep and the August sunlight was on her hair. There were wonderful glints of gold among the dark curls.
"Shall you go away, then?" she asked.
"I may--soon," he said.
She was silent, bending over some work that she had taken up. The man looked down at the bowed head. The old look of perplexity, of wonder, was in his eyes.
"What shall you do?" he said abruptly.
She made a startled movement, but did not raise her eyes.
"I shall just--go on," she said, in a voice that was hardly audible.
"Not here," he said. "You will be lonely."
There was an unusual note of mastery in his voice. She glanced up, and met his eyes resolutely for a moment.
"I am used to loneliness," she said slowly.
"But you don"t prefer it?" he said.
She bent her head again.
"Yes, I prefer it," she said.
There followed a pause. Then abruptly Durant asked a question.
"Are you still sorry for me?" he said.
"No," said Molly.
He bent slightly towards her. Movement had become much easier to him of late.
"Molly," he said very gently, "that is the kindest thing you have ever said."
She laughed in a queer, shaky note over her work.
He bent nearer.
"You have done a tremendous lot for me," he said, speaking very softly.
"I wonder if I dare ask of you--one thing more?"
She did not answer. He put his hand on her shoulder.
"Molly," he said, "will you marry me?"
"No," said Molly under her breath.
"Ah!" he said. "Forgive me for asking!"
She looked up at him then with that in her eyes which he could not understand.
"Mr. Durant," she said, steadily, "I thank you very much, and it isn"t--that. But I can only be your friend."
"Never anything more, Molly?" he said, and he smiled at her, very gently, very kindly, but without tenderness.
"No, sir," Molly said in the same steady tone. "Never anything more."
"Well," said Gregory Mountfort on the following day, "this place has done wonders for you, Hugh. You"re a different man."
"I believe I am," said Hugh.
He spoke with his eyes upon a bouquet of poppies and corn that had been left at his door without any message early that morning. It was eloquent to him of a friendship that did not mean to be lightly extinguished, but his heart was heavy notwithstanding. He had begun to desire something greater than friendship.
"Physically," said Mountfort, "you are stronger than I ever expected to see you again. You don"t suffer much pain now, do you?"