Suddenly she looked round.

“Will you—­will you come and see me some day?” she asked him shyly.

Her tone was rather of request than invitation, and Durant was curiously touched.  He had a feeling that she awaited his reply with eagerness.

He smiled for the first time.

“With pleasure,” he said courteously, “if the path is easy and the distance not too great for my powers.”

“It is quite close,” she said readily, “hardly a stone’s throw from here—­a little wooden cottage—­the first you come to.”

“And you live quite alone?” Durant said.

“I like it best,” she assured him.

“Will you tell me your name?” he asked.

“My name is Molly,” she answered quietly.

“Nothing else?” said Durant with a puzzled frown.

“Nothing else, sir,” she said, with her air of womanly dignity.

He made no outward comment, but inwardly he wondered.  Was this odd little, dark-haired creature some nameless waif of the sea brought up on the charity of the fisher-folk, he asked himself.

She stood aside for him to pass, drawing Caesar out of his way.  He stopped a moment to pat the dog’s head.  And so standing, leaning upon his crutches, he suddenly and keenly looked into the olive-tinted face that the sunbonnet shadowed.

“Sorry for me, eh?” he said, and he uttered a laugh that was short and very bitter.

She bent down over the dog.

“Yes, I am sorry,” she said, almost under her breath.

Bending lower, she picked up something that lay on the ground between them.

“You dropped this,” she said.

He took it from her with a grim hardening of the mouth.  It was the letter he had received from his fiancee a year ago.  But his eyes never left the face of the girl before him.

“I wonder—­” he said abruptly, and stopped.

There was a pause.  The girl waited, her hand nervously caressing the Newfoundland’s curls.  She did not raise her eyes, but the lids fluttered strangely.

“I wonder,” Durant said, and his voice was suddenly kind, “if I might ask you to do something for me.”

She gave him a swift glance.

“Please do!” she murmured.

“This letter,” he said, and he held it out to her.

“I should like it torn up—­very small.”

She took the envelope and hesitated.  Durant was watching her.  There was unmistakable mastery in his eyes.

“Go on!” he said briefly.

And with a quick, startled movement, she obeyed.  The letter fluttered around them both in tiny fragments.  Hugh Durant looked on with a hard, impassive face, as he might have looked on at an execution.

The girl’s hands were shaking.  She glanced at him once or twice uncertainly.

When the work of destruction was accomplished she made him a nervous curtsey and turned to go.

Durant’s face softened a second time into a smile.