“Why not?”

“Please sit down again.”

“But you wish to be alone——­”

“Please sit down!”

There was a flush on the cheek turned towards me, and the chin was tilted higher.

I sat down.

To westward the sky had changed to the hue of a bruised cherry.  The sun had sunk below the horizon, and the sea looked cold and leaden.  The blackbird had long since flown.

“I am glad you told me, Mr. Garnet.”

She dipped her brush in the water.

“Because I don’t like to think badly of—­people.”

She bent her head over her painting.

“Though I still think you behaved very wrongly.  And I am afraid my father will never forgive you for what you did.”

Her father!  As if he counted.

“But you do?” I said eagerly.

“I think you are less to blame than I thought you were at first.”

“No more than that?”

“You can’t expect to escape all consequences.  You did a very stupid thing.”

“I was tempted.”

The sky was a dull grey now.  It was growing dusk.  The grass on which I sat was wet with dew.

I stood up.

“Isn’t it getting a little dark for painting?” I said.  “Are you sure you won’t catch cold?  It’s very damp.”

“Perhaps it is.  And it is late, too.”

She shut her paint-box, and emptied the little mug on to the grass.

“May I carry your things?” I said.

I think she hesitated, but only for a moment.

I possessed myself of the camp-stool, and we started on our homeward journey.

We were both silent.  The spell of the quiet summer evening was on us.

" ‘And all the air a solemn stillness holds,’ " she said softly.  “I love this cliff, Mr. Garnet.  It’s the most soothing place in the world.”

“I found it so this evening.”

She glanced at me quickly.

“You’re not looking well,” she said.  “Are you sure you are not overworking yourself?”

“No, it’s not that.”

Somehow we had stopped, as if by agreement, and were facing each other.  There was a look in her eyes I had never seen there before.  The twilight hung like a curtain between us and the world.  We were alone together in a world of our own.

“It is because I had offended you,” I said.

She laughed a high, unnatural laugh.

“I have loved you ever since I first saw you,” I said doggedly.

CHAPTER XVIII

UKRIDGE GIVES ME ADVICE

Hours after—­or so it seemed to me—­we reached the spot at which our ways divided.  We stopped, and I felt as if I had been suddenly cast back into the workaday world from some distant and pleasanter planet.  I think Phyllis must have felt much the same sensation, for we both became on the instant intensely practical and businesslike.